you'll find answers here ...

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win3 … o/naming-a-file

That's a pretty long article, did you figure out which case was affecting you quackgyver?

I can imagine that if you were using a 16-bit CD-ROM driver in your CONFIG.SYS and it used the device name "CDROM" so that AUTOEXEC.BAT had MSCDEX /D:CDROM in it, then the name "CDROM" would be used for the device and couldn't be used for a file, but I imagine that for Windows 98 SE you're probably not using a 16-bit driver.

doshea wrote on 2022-05-04, 11:58:

That's a pretty long article, did you figure out which case was affecting you quackgyver?

I can imagine that if you were using a 16-bit CD-ROM driver in your CONFIG.SYS and it used the device name "CDROM" so that AUTOEXEC.BAT had MSCDEX /D:CDROM in it, then the name "CDROM" would be used for the device and couldn't be used for a file, but I imagine that for Windows 98 SE you're probably not using a 16-bit driver.

Ah, that's exactly it. Thanks for solving the mystery! I have indeed named the device "CDROM" in config.sys. 😀

Hi. You can change the name to MSCD001 if you like (a reference to MSCDEX.EXE or an abbreviation for 'Microsoft CD-ROM device 001').
That often was the default name at the time, I believe.

Jo22 wrote on 2022-12-05, 16:16:

Hi. You can change the name to MSCD001 if you like (a reference to MSCDEX.EXE or an abbreviation for 'Microsoft CD-ROM device 001').
That often was the default name at the time, I believe.

IIRC that's the default device name if the manufacturer doesn't specify another name. Many larger brands (NEC, Sony, Asus, etc.) would specify a name that begins with respective company names, especially those providing a customized installer rather than asking user to edit CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT manually.

For the record, if no DOS games/apps using the CD-ROM has to be operated under Win98SE then no DOS driver is needed in CONFIG.SYS at all.

dormcat wrote on 2022-12-05, 17:22:

For the record, if no DOS games/apps using the CD-ROM has to be operated under Win98SE then no DOS driver is needed in CONFIG.SYS at all.

Yes, that's right in 99% of the cases, I think.
But personally, I've experienced special cases in the past, too.

a) Windows 9x can use DOS-based drivers in case no Windows driver is available.
MSCDEX isn't required for this to work, Windows 9x has a Protected-Mode driver as an CD-ROM extension (some sort of MSCDEX).

In the 90s, I experienced this scenario on my father's 386DX-40. His Mitsumi Lu005 had no Windows support.

b) The built-in MSCDEX alternative in Windows 9x does not support CD-i anymore.
If you need to watch films on CD-i based CD-ROMs (not to be confused with Video-CD), then MSCDEX is needed.

Alternatively, an experimental Windows driver must be used.
http://www.icdia.co.uk/articles/filesystem.html

c) Support for Japanese or pre-ISO-9660 formats (from the 80s) was dropped in Windows 9x.
MSCDEX is again required to read them..

Jo22 wrote on 2022-12-05, 18:22:

In the 90s, I experienced this scenario on my father's 386DX-40. His Mitsumi Lu005 had no Windows support.

Sorry, but this is not correct.
Even Windows 98 had drivers for that Mitsumi controller.
However, it was not plug and play, and I'm not sure whether hardware detection got it automatically.

Disruptor wrote on 2022-12-06, 10:15:

Sorry, but this is not correct. Even Windows 98 had drivers for that Mitsumi controller. However, it was not plug and play, and […]
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Jo22 wrote on 2022-12-05, 18:22:

In the 90s, I experienced this scenario on my father's 386DX-40. His Mitsumi Lu005 had no Windows support.

Sorry, but this is not correct.
Even Windows 98 had drivers for that Mitsumi controller.
However, it was not plug and play, and I'm not sure whether hardware detection got it automatically.

I know what you're refering to, but these drivers didn't work with the Lu005 in said PC.
I'm not sure why, to be honest. It's been 20+ years. Maybe it was because DMA/non-DMA mode, not sure.
The only piece of driver that found the CD-ROM drive on the original controller was the DOS driver.

This was sort of a problem during re-installation of Windows 95 RTM, also.
After first run, Windows 95 RTM setup did remove the DOS-based driver
and lost access to its driver database on CD-ROM.
So it was necessary to use a bootable DOS diskette and add the driver back to Config.sys.

OS/2 Warp 3 was not like this, I vaguely remember.
It detected the CD-ROM with its own set of drivers.
But that's another story.

Windows 98 didn't exit at the time the PC was in use.

As far as I remember, those .sys driver had to be removed from config.sys when using the built-in 32 bit Windows driver.
(ATAPI CDROM drivers may remain in config.sys)
Perhaps you had to copy the entire Win98 directory of the setup cdrom to your hdd just for installing the drivers.
Yes, quite a long time.

Double Speed: FX-001D
New Single Speed: FX-001
Old Single Speed: LU005S