No, it does not require drivers. Simple IDE controllers like this do little more than attach your IDE device to the ISA bus. It is likely jumpered to be a secondary controller so you probably can’t boot from it with most standard BIOS without changing the jumpers.

The CDRom audio is just a passthrough connector from the cd rom drive to the external ports.

Is the CDrom driver configured correctly?

douglar wrote on 2023-03-28, 11:53:

No, it does not require drivers. Simple IDE controllers like this do little more than attach your IDE device to the ISA bus. It is likely jumpered to be a secondary controller so you probably can’t boot from it with most standard BIOS without changing the jumpers.

The CDRom audio is just a passthrough connector from the cd rom drive to the external ports.

Is the CDrom driver configured correctly?

Secondary Channel in BIOS is set to NONE

CDROM is set to Master

FIles copied to CDRom folder on C:
VIDE-CDD.SYS
SHSUCDEX

Autoexec.bat line added
LH C:\CDROM\SHSUCDEX /D:CDROM /M:15 /E /S /L:D /V

Config.sys line added
DEVICEHIGH=C:\CDROM\VIDE-CDD.SYS /D:CDROM

I believe it is configured correctly??

Well, what 486 board and what IDE controller do you use for the hard disk?

I guess your mainboard or the controller where you have connected the hard disk to has dual channel.
Thus your ISA controller and the present hardware is in conflict then.
Then you either need to remove that ISA controller from the board and to connect the CDROM to the present hardware or to disable secondary IDE channel in BIOS. However, using the present hardware is the best idea.

And you perhaps have a 4th IDE channel on the Sound Blaster too. 🤣!

Disruptor wrote on 2023-03-28, 13:02:

Well, what 486 board and what IDE controller do you use for the hard disk? […]
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Well, what 486 board and what IDE controller do you use for the hard disk?

I guess your mainboard or the controller where you have connected the hard disk to has dual channel.
Thus your ISA controller and the present hardware is in conflict then.
Then you either need to remove that ISA controller from the board and to connect the CDROM to the present hardware or to disable secondary IDE channel in BIOS. However, using the present hardware is the best idea.

And you perhaps have a 4th IDE channel on the Sound Blaster too. 🤣!

Unfortunately the CDROM is not on the list of compatible devices for the AWE 32.

The motherboards secondary channel is disabled in the BIOS.

I'm quite stumped.

There is no need that it's on the list of the AWE. It just is important that it has the same interface, like IDE. There exist several versions of the AWE which may have different CDROM interfaces.

Well, then it may work when you have the mentioned drivers copied to C:\CDROM
What happens when you connect the CDROM to the present controller and to enable it in BIOS?

Is that isa card jumpered correctly for IRQ 15?

douglar wrote on 2023-03-28, 13:35:

Is that isa card jumpered correctly of IRQ 15?

It does not look like that.
It should be one more away from the slot bracket.

Disruptor wrote on 2023-03-28, 13:37:

douglar wrote on 2023-03-28, 13:35:

Is that isa card jumpered correctly of IRQ 15?

It does not look like that.
It should be one more away from the slot bracket.

My bad as I overlooked that.

Ok I set to irq of 15 on the jumpers for this card and the drive is now detected BUT I'm struggling with identifying the drive letter for the CDROM.

I type "d:\" and I get a return of invalid drive specification.

Any thoughts?

I see in your autoexec.bat that you typed
LH C:\CDROM\SHSUCDEX D:CDROM /M:15 /E /S /L:D /V
Shouldn't it be
LH C:\CDROM\SHSUCDEX /D:CDROM /M:15 /E /S /L:D /V
?

You could also try to simplify it (for testing) to just C:\CDROM\SHSUCDX /D:CDROM /L:D

Have you tried to use MSCDEX instead of SHSUCDEX?
MSCDEX /D:CDROM

Or try to use another handle than "CDROM", like "MSCD001"

Does this CDROM work on the present hardware?

Deksor wrote on 2023-03-28, 16:36:

I see in your autoexec.bat that you typed LH C:\CDROM\SHSUCDEX D:CDROM /M:15 /E /S /L:D /V Shouldn't it be LH C:\CDROM\SHSUCDEX […]
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I see in your autoexec.bat that you typed
LH C:\CDROM\SHSUCDEX D:CDROM /M:15 /E /S /L:D /V
Shouldn't it be
LH C:\CDROM\SHSUCDEX /D:CDROM /M:15 /E /S /L:D /V
?

You could also try to simplify it (for testing) to just C:\CDROM\SHSUCDX /D:CDROM /L:D

All is now good and I want to say thanks to all.

I went with a simplified option as proposed above and it worked first time.

Thanks all.

Glad I could help 😀

You're wasting some conventional memory though. If you encounter some memory errors later, you may want to go back to this and check if you cannot load it high again