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What driver is needed to enable MS-DOS 6.22 to read an IDE CD-ROM drive?

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First post, by DR-DOS Fanboy

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I'm running MS-DOS 6.22/Windows 3.1 in VirtualBox using the default hardware specs. I want to enable reading of the CD-ROM drive so I can install games like Doom and Sim City that won't fit on a 1.44 MB floppy image. I've been reading the help file for MSCDEX.EXE and it shows what commands to put in AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS. The CONFIG.SYS line requires a specification of a driver (.DRV extension) specific to the CD-ROM controller. The VM settings state that my CD-ROM uses an IDE controller, but it doesn't specify any further. So I'm guessing I need a generic IDE optical driver rather than one specific to any manufacturer. What specific driver do I need?

Reply 1 of 2, by superfury

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I usually use VIDE-CDD.SYS(https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/VIDE-CDD.SYS for two reasons: 1. It's smaller than OAKCDROM.SYS. 2. OAKCDROM.SYS crashed on my emulator(might be fixed by now, still untested)). Simply add

DEVICE=VIDE-CDD.SYS /D:mscd001

(without quotes) to your config.sys(with the VIDE-CDD.SYS in the same folder, adjust the path otherwise). Then simply load

MSCDEX /D:mscd001

in your autoexec.bat("install=mscdex.exe /D:mscd001" in your config.sys might also work).

Loading either of those drivers and MSCDEX should be enough to get your CD-ROM drive(if it's a basically generic drive that supports IDE standards) working in MS-DOS.

Author of the UniPCemu emulator.
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UniPCemu for Android, Windows, PSP, Vita and Switch on itch.io

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