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Trying to install Creative GCD-R540B on SB16 CT2290

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First post, by BerkeleyGamecat

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I know that this issue has been discussed often over the years, but I'm having trouble getting a handle on it.

System: Compaq Deskpro XE 4100
O/S: DOS6.22, Win3.1
Sound: Sound Blaster 16 CT2290
CD Drive; Creative GCD-R540B

SB16 configues fine, DIAGNOSE is happy, and game sound works well in DOS - but I can't seem to figure out how to hook up the CD.

I tried installing the Goldstar driver from oemdrivers.com (the GCD-R540B is a rebranded Goldstar/LG device), but it reports 'No drives found, aborting installation' when it attempts to initialize.

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I have tried hooking the drive to both the SB16 IDE port as master and chaining to the HDD IDE connector as slave. Should it theoretically work from either one?

As part of trying different things I ended up installing the configuration manager (CTCM). It doesn't seem to cause problems, but then again it doesn't seem to fix them either. Hardware and O/S are both non-PnP and there are no PnP boards in the system. I can probably safely remove this from the system.

I see mention of SBIDE.SYS (and there is a copy in the CTCM dir), but as far as i can see this is for the earlier drives with the Panasonic interface.

I saw mention somewhere that connecting the drives with a Panasonic interface to the IDE connector might possibly damage them? If so, then this is an extremely poor design, since the Panasonic and IDE connectors in the CT2290 are identical and sit right next to each other. In fact, my first fail was to plug the drive into the 'Creative / Panasonic Drive' connector based on the fact that it has "Creative" branding. : -/

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Reply 1 of 5, by NeoG_

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It should work with GSCDROM.SYS but it needs to be pointed to the hardware location as there is no automatic detection. Jumper the card to Quaternary since the mainboard already has 2 IDE ports and use /P:168,[IRQ]

E.G. "GSCDROM.SYS /P:168,11" if the IDE is set to Quaternary, IRQ 11

98/DOS Rig: BabyAT AladdinV, K6-2+/550, V3 2000, 128MB PC100, 20GB HDD, 128GB SD2IDE, SB Live!, SB16-SCSI, PicoGUS, WP32 McCake, iNFRA CD, ZIP100
XP Rig: Lian Li PC-10 ATX, Gigabyte X38-DQ6, Core2Duo E6850, ATi HD5870, 2GB DDR2, 2TB HDD, X-Fi XtremeGamer

Reply 2 of 5, by BerkeleyGamecat

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NeoG_ wrote on 2026-04-22, 04:55:

It should work with GSCDROM.SYS but it needs to be pointed to the hardware location...
E.G. "GSCDROM.SYS /P:168,11" if the IDE is set to Quaternary, IRQ 11

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction NeoG_. I changed to jumpers and CONFIG file but I'm still seeing the same fail when the driver attempts to initialize.

Question - what does the 168 in /P:168,11 specify? The driver parameters aren't documented in the README that comes with the driver installer (GSCD).

Are there any tools that I could use to determine what's going on?

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Reply 3 of 5, by BerkeleyGamecat

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So, it looks like it might have been a bad drive. I replaced the GCD-R540B with a Teac CD-512E (IDE) and its working now. This brings up a couple of more questions though -

A couple of places on the web say that the 512e should use the ATAPI driver, but when I tried that it failed to init. I ended up falling back to the original GSCDROM.SYS that I had been attempting to use on the GCD-R540B and it seems to work fine with the Teac - running in DOS 6.22 and Win 3.1.

I'm using the /P:168,11 parameters that NeoG_ suggested, but I still don't understand the '168' value. In fact, I can find very little documentation on what parameters can be passed to specific drivers. I tried passing /P:168,11 to the ATAPI driver. It didn't help - but it didn't complain either. It's not clear that ATAPI supports any /P-arameters.

So, I ended up with -

DEVICE=C:\GSCDROM.SYS /D:MSCDOOO /P:168,11 /v

The '/v' argument was added by the driver installer. It doesn't seem to be a standard DEVICE argument that I can tell. Anyone know what it does?

Reply 4 of 5, by NeoG_

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168 is the hex base address/port for the IDE controller, similar to a sound blaster being on port 220. The Secondary/Tertiary/Quaternary jumpers change the address to 170, 1E8 and 168 respectively. Since only one controller can occupy a port/address, the card gives you the option of moving it out of the way of the onboard controllers if present.

All CD-ROMs use the ATAPI protocol, ATAPI was invented to allow the use of CD-ROM drives and other removable drives over the IDE connection. ATAPI.SYS and GSCDROM.SYS are just two different versions of an ATAPI IDE driver. Some will only search the primary/secondary locations (170,1E8) and not have configurable IRQ and address (Fixed to IRQ 14/15 which is the standard for onboard controllers). Some will have combined parameters like /P:address,irq and some will use separate parameters like /P:address and /I:irq though I'm not really across all of them.

/V is usually verbose mode as in it prints out more information on screen than usual

Last edited by NeoG_ on 2026-04-23, 06:35. Edited 1 time in total.

98/DOS Rig: BabyAT AladdinV, K6-2+/550, V3 2000, 128MB PC100, 20GB HDD, 128GB SD2IDE, SB Live!, SB16-SCSI, PicoGUS, WP32 McCake, iNFRA CD, ZIP100
XP Rig: Lian Li PC-10 ATX, Gigabyte X38-DQ6, Core2Duo E6850, ATi HD5870, 2GB DDR2, 2TB HDD, X-Fi XtremeGamer

Reply 5 of 5, by BerkeleyGamecat

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NeoG_ wrote on 2026-04-23, 05:05:

168 is the hex base address/port for the IDE controller, ...
.../V is usually verbose mode as in it prints out more information on screen than usual

Thank you sir for your service! 🫡

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