OK, thanks - I have now got a suitable-looking driver from driverguide. It's only a DOS driver, here's what happens. I am running Win95 on this laptop.
- the line the driver puts in config.sys contains a lot of switches which stop the driver loading [as in, if I take them out the mscdex line in autoexec finds the CD drive]. Though this means the drive letter I specify is ignored.
- Win95 now reports a D: drive but cannot read CDROMs, saying the CD ROM is not IS9660 or High Sierra format.
- If I press F8 on startup and go to Command Prompt Only, then DOS sees the CD as drive D: and can read it. Only it cannot see the E: and F: partitions on my hard drive.
The command prompt mode is still Win95 [albeit the built-in DOS] of course.
Is there any way to either get Win95 to pick up the drive using the DOS drivers? Or is there a way to get DOS to recognise the additional partitions on the hard drive?
Suspect the answer is NO in each case, but maybe someone knows better!
Having the CD available in DOS is a step forward however, so many thanks for advice so far.