The onboard IDE works because it is supported by your computers BIOS.
The Promise card has no IDE/ATAPI emulation, so it only works in Windows.
If you can boot from it, it probably has a very simple boot routine but no CD support.
To make it work in DOS you need the right driver for that chipset.

For example, FreeDOS has a SATA driver named gcdrom.
http://help.fdos.org/en/hhstndrd/base/gcdrom.htm

Thank you for your suggestion to use GCDROM. Unfortunately, GCDROM did not work. I get the following error,

1NO CD-ROM drive to use; CDROM not loaded!

I guess I will have to stick with the onboard IDE controller with PIO-4.

Unless someone writes a device driver for the card's chipset, you will have to use the onboard. This card is too old to support AHCI, which does have an optical driver for DOS. See: http://h20566.www2.hp.com/hpsc/swd/public/det … g=en&cc=us#tab1

What prevents you from using DMA on the onboard controller?

Is there a working DMA driver for the UMC 8881/8886 chipset?

feipoa wrote:

Thank you for your suggestion to use GCDROM. Unfortunately, GCDROM did not work. I get the following error, […]
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Thank you for your suggestion to use GCDROM. Unfortunately, GCDROM did not work. I get the following error,

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1NO CD-ROM drive to use; CDROM not loaded!

I guess I will have to stick with the onboard IDE controller with PIO-4.

Did you try DOS 7.1? (It comes with a cd driver if you do a full install)

I'm not sure if DOS 7.1 is FreeDOS. MS-DOS 7.x at REMOVED

feipoa wrote:

Is there a working DMA driver for the UMC 8881/8886 chipset?

Hmm you are right, this might be a blocker. I actually don't know which IDE-CDROM DOS-Drivers support MW-DMA2 on pre PCI-IDE controllers.
The Oakcdrom.sys from Win9x supports DMA, but likely just for PCI-IDE controllers. (help states that it defaults to PIO otherwise).
There is the Triones package with tricd.sys (PCI BM-DMA) and the qcdrom.sys (UDMA).

Probably less helpful:
In Win9x you can set the hook at DMA in the device properties of the drive in the device manager and if the hook stays after reboot then you will have DMA for the CDROM in a DOS window.

However, someone knows DMA capable DOS IDE CD-ROM drivers for pre standard PCI-IDE-controllers ?
(btw the older slcd.sys for the proprietary sony interface was able to use DMA already)

I tried using the actual UMC-supplied UM8886BF driver, but it causes problems.

I normally use PCI bus mastering SCSI host controllers for HDD and CD-ROM, which work fine with DOS CD-ROM drivers, however, it is difficult to find a SCSI HDD which is quiet enough for my liking. You never know what you will get on eBay for the spin and access noise. Sometimes they are quiet, sometimes they are noisy. For this reason, I wanted to use an IDE or SATA PCI host controller.

Know of any Ultra66-133 PCI host controllers which will a) work on a PCI-based 486 and b) have DMA DOS drivers for CD-ROM access? The Promise Ultra100 and SATA150 do not have DOS CD-ROM access.