Okay, I found and copied mscdex to the c: drive, now where do I get a generic cdrom driver?

mscdex is the cdrom driver.
You just put/leave it on the (standard) DOS boot floppy. Boot from the floppy or you won't be able to use your cdrom drive from DOS.

What if I want to use the cdrom without the bootdisk?

You need also a driver to load in config.sys. A bootdisk should have this also. Try windows 98 bootdisk.

dosquest wrote:

What if I want to use the cdrom without the bootdisk?

You have NO choice but to load the cdrom driver from somewhere...

Okay, I found a zip of a cdrom setup, where do I get a dos un-zipping program?

google is your friend 😎
http://tinyurl.com/6czhd77
try the first one 😀

dosquest wrote:

Okay, I found a zip of a cdrom setup, where do I get a dos un-zipping program?

Dosquest, perhaps it would be a good idea for you to do some good reading, especially since it seems you have little idea of what you're actually doing.

The questions you're asking are really very basic and I'm happy to help out, but I can't be your teacher.

And as Markk mentioned, google is your friend idd 😉

So, I thought that pkunzip is for 32 bit architecture not pure 16bit dos.

Just unzip it under windows and then copy the driver onto a floppy or your Retro PCs HDD.