VOGONS


First post, by guitarbloke

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I can't for the life of me get any CD drive working under DOS (win98). It works fine in Windows.

The drive is an LG CD/RW/DVD-ROM (GCC-4520B)

I've been trying with several different drivers but all I get is a flashing cursor and no prompt on startup. If I remove the CD driver lines, it boots fine into DOS.

Can anyone steer me in the right direction please?

Autoexec:
@ECHO OFF
PROMPT $P$G
PATH=C:\; C:\CDROM; C:\WINDOWS; C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND
LH C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\MSCDEX.EXE /D:MSCD000
SETBLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T4
C:\SETUPSA.EXE /S
C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\MOUSE.COM /Y

Config.sys:
DOS=HIGH,UMB
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=C:\CDROM\OAKCDROM.SYS /D:MSCD000

Reply 1 of 8, by Ryccardo

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guitarbloke wrote on 2023-01-29, 17:48:

LH C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\MSCDEX.EXE /D:MSCD000
DOS=HIGH,UMB

IIRC you need an UMA driver to load high anything (ie, they screwed up the name of that command, it's not actually using high memory but upper memory... and the former is technically part of the latter except that practically it's not)

guitarbloke wrote on 2023-01-29, 17:48:

SETBLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T4

Unrelated, but not sure if this is one of the cases where you can skip the space after the name of the command?

Good luck!

Reply 2 of 8, by Horun

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try mscd001 not mscd000 like in this post Re: Need some DOS optical drive help

Ryccardo wrote on 2023-01-29, 19:06:

SETBLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T4

Unrelated, but not sure if this is one of the cases where you can skip the space after the name of the command?

Good luck!

Correct should be: Set blaster=

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 3 of 8, by guitarbloke

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Thanks @Ryccardo and @Horun - I'll change that!

Any ideas on getting the cdrom working?

Reply 4 of 8, by CoffeeOne

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guitarbloke wrote on 2023-01-29, 20:38:

Thanks @Ryccardo and @Horun - I'll change that!

Any ideas on getting the cdrom working?

Hmm.

Could you tell us the output of the commands?
Interesting is this (config.sys comes first):
DEVICE=C:\CDROM\OAKCDROM.SYS /D:MSCD000
I assume here is a problem

and then from autoexec this one (which only works, when the device was loaded before in config.sys of course!)
LH C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\MSCDEX.EXE /D:MSCD000

Reply 5 of 8, by LSS10999

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Where did the system hang occur when you have the CD driver line (OAKCDROM) active? Was it OAKCDROM itself, or at some point later?

By the way, what motherboard are you using? Depending on your system/chipset configurations some CD-ROM drivers may or may not work.

LH shouldn't be a problem. If no upper memory then the TSR in question will stay resident in conventional memory.

EDIT: Did you try other CD-ROM drivers? I think in your case you may try VIDE-CDD to see if that will work for you.

Reply 6 of 8, by Jo22

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Does MSCD000 work as a device name, at all ? I always assumed MSCD001 was the default.

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

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Reply 7 of 8, by paradigital

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Jo22 wrote on 2023-01-30, 16:56:

Does MSCD000 work as a device name, at all ? I always assumed MSCD001 was the default.

Pretty sure that’s just a string, the number isn’t an integer and isn’t checked. You can call it whatever you like, so long as you are calling it the same thing in config.sys and autoexec.bat.

Hence why in most boot disks it’s called “BANANA”. You could call it Zaphod if you liked.

Reply 8 of 8, by Jo22

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paradigital wrote on 2023-01-30, 17:05:
Jo22 wrote on 2023-01-30, 16:56:

Does MSCD000 work as a device name, at all ? I always assumed MSCD001 was the default.

Pretty sure that’s just a string, the number isn’t an integer and isn’t checked. You can call it whatever you like, so long as you are calling it the same thing in config.sys and autoexec.bat.

Hence why in most boot disks it’s called “BANANA”. You could call it Zaphod if you liked.

Sure, makes sense. But on the other hand.. This is DOS.
The same DOS in which silly applications used "D:" as a hardcoded location for a CD-ROM.
That DOS in which applications checked diskettes by the presence of empty files ("DISK1.", "DISK2.") rather than the label string.
Or worse (?), used a single "DISK ." file on each floppy that had another content ("DISKETTE1", DISKETTE2") each time.
This made it very tricky to use a software installer from a single HDD directory.
So I would always use the official names or known conventions, not "DINGDONG", "$EXDRIVE" or "BAZOOKA". 😁

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//