VOGONS


First post, by Jed118

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Hello all,

I've recently been tinkering with a 486 and it has an OPTI931 sound card (which won't work in WIN3.1) with an IDE CDROM connection.

Lastdrive=z in all cases.
Documentation about CDSETUP.SYS comes from the 486's help/config files, and is somewhat expanded upon here:
http://ftp.serdica.org/public/drivers/Sound/O … 3w95/README.TXT

I've used mscdex.exe extensively when I was younger, even on the proprietary 2x CR 56x Panasonic drives.
From a working 386 I have kicking around with a 2x CDRROM, the CONFIG.SYS line looks like this:
DEVICEHIGH=C:\SB16\CDMKE.SYS /D:MSCD000 /SBP:220 /Q
The MSCDEX redirector entry looks like this in AUTOEXEC.BAT:
C:\DOS\MSCDEX.EXE /D:MSCD000 /V /M:12

This is for the proprietary 2x Panasonic drive, but it makes sense - Config sets the device /D:MSCD000 and then Autoexec redirects the driver via MSCDEX.EXE and you get a drive letter.

Moving onto the 486 with an IDE drive, CONFIG.SYS line looks like this:
DEVICE=C:\OPTI931\CDSETUP.SYS /T:I /P:376,170 /I:f
When this line is executed (it takes a good 20 seconds of staring at Starting MS-DOS: Slowest driver, ever) I am greeted with "CDROM Driver loaded successfully", and continues to boot, configuring the sound card, himem.sys, etc.

Here's where the confusion starts - What is the actual driver loaded here? It doesn't seem to have /D: designation anywhere, so what does MSCDEX.EXE actually call? Indeed, the only lines relating to the soundboard in autoexec.bat are C:\OPTI931\SNDTUNE and C:\OPTI931\SNDINIT /b

I tried starting MSCDEX manually but no matter what I put in there, I get No valid CDROM device drivers selected.

My question is, what is the name of the bloody CDROM device driver that OPTI supplies, and how do I get a drive letter?

Last edited by Jed118 on 2017-10-23, 03:49. Edited 2 times in total.

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Reply 1 of 6, by Koltoroc

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You can not use a drive with a proprietary interface on an ide connector. You need either the proper standalone controlle card or a sound card with that specific interface type. While both IDE and the panasonic interface (and the mitsumi interface for that matter) use 40 pin ribbon cables, they are NOT compatible with each other.

Reply 2 of 6, by Jed118

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I should add that the 386 is driving the CDROM off the soundblaster card, proprietariliy (if that's a word) through the interface labelled "Panasonic" - The same is true with the 4x in the 486 (off the IDE port on the card it is a standard IDE drive which I have tested in another Pentium machine I have, so I know that drive works - I also have no shortage of IDE CDROMS around here) - I know that the standard 170x address range is for master/slave to the standard IDE port, but I have two drives in the 486 so I want to run it off the soundboard. The drivers I am using on the 486 are the OPTi drivers I downloaded on this site (driver section).

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Reply 3 of 6, by CkRtech

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Check the readme file for the Opti drivers. The CDSETUP is an extra setup to basically choose resources. You still need another driver for the CD-ROM (which will use your /D:NAMEHERE parameter that can then be referenced with MSCDEX).

Using your example line from config.sys, you didn't want to specify an interrupt (like 15?) for the /I: parameter?
After that, you'll need an appropriate IDE driver. I think that Opti archive comes with several .SYS Files? I can't remember. (I've got a system with an Opti chip soundcard that I need to return to some day...)

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Reply 4 of 6, by Jed118

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I think I got it - I found an OPTI 930 soundcard, put that in, loaded its drivers , and the CDROM worked after I loaded the MSCDEX from the prompt. I'm going to copy the CD extensions that were lacking on the 931 driver suite and enter the information manually in config.sys and autoexec.bat and try again after inserting the original 931 that was giving me trouble.

Worst case the 930 stays in the 486 and I have a 931 I can put into a computer that will never need proprietary IDE-from-soundcard support. Perhaps my 286 will get that card 😉

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Reply 6 of 6, by Jed118

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That's an excellent idea! I had been away from the old x86s for too long it seems.

In any case, the opti39x driver I found will not work on both soundcards, but it will drive the CDROM. I guess the IDE interface is the same across both cards (930 and 931), but the sound chip isn't (well, they are different models so no surprise there). The solution is to either use the 930 card with the 93x drivers fully, or use the 931 sound card with its driver suite and manually add the CDSYS file (can't verify filename now, too late to power on the system - wife is already mad at key typing sounds on this machine 😘 ) from the 93x software suite and modify the config and autoexec files to mimic the ones on the CD portion of the 93x. Not super hard, just time consuming and a fair bit of head-scratching/file substitution.

Bonus - Windows 3.1 now has sound.

*edit - the OPTi930 setup is driving the 4x IDE drive using OAK IDE setting in the (extensive list) of supported drivers, in case anyone in the future has this issue running an IDE CDROM off the card. BTW Both cards physically have only an IDE interface option (header) on them (931 and 930).

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