Why not just use an IDE drive?

UIDEJR.SYS should work as a device driver, and you can use MSCDEX.EXE or SHUSCDEX.EXE for DOS support.

If you manage to track down a sound card with a proprietary header and a CDROM drive to suit, you need to locate and setup the appropriate drivers (depending on the type of drive, the software and config instructions may be difficult to find) plus you may need to make your own cable, as many such drives didn't use 40 pin IDE cables.

Ok, yeah you have right on that IDE look cable.. they arent findable anymore..
So if the Ct-3900 uses IDE as well, then i could better take that one..

Is it possible to boot from the IDE drive when connected to the soundcard?

No, since the soundcard does not bring it's own bios.
Also usually 486er BIOS are not able to boot from atapi drives, even when plugged to the standard ide controller connectors.

They also usually do not report connected atapi drives in BIOS, you have to load the atapi driver like donutking mentioned in config.sys.
So it's not plug and play, but more like connect and detect on driver load.

Some atapi drivers allow to give the ports of additional IDE controller and/or scan common ports automatically (f.e. if the SB16 IDE will be IDE3-5).

So if i want the drive to boot, the only option that is left is the scsi way?
Is it handy to boot from the cd-rom on a 486 system, or is it just wastless, because in that time we also didnt booting from those drives..

Well for the SCSI option you need to have a SCSI BIOS that knows CD-ROMs by BIOS already and supports boot from them.
For ISA SCSI Controllers rather unlikely, though modern PCI controller can do this. Then it is the question if modern PCI SCSI controllers work well in 486 board, since they usually use PCI busmastering that was flakey in 486 times.

There are only rare cases where booting from CD is really required, the reliable way is boot from disk. Even better is to prepare the HDD to use in another computer and finish up things by booting from disk and just SYSing / Activating the boot partition.

some sound cards such as the CT1770 SB16 had a SCSI-2 controller built in... it is basically an Adaptec AHA-1520 integrated into the card and thus uses the same drivers... you can use any SCSI CD-ROM or DVD with it if you want... there is no BIOS so you cannot boot off it, just like the CT3900

if you want CD-ROM boot, SCSI is the easiest way, but you need a card that has a BIOS that supports it... not sure if the AHA-1542 supports it, but I know the AHA-2940 series PCI cards do... the AHA-2940U's latest BIOS is 2.20, the AHA-2940UW's is 3.03 (no longer available to download officially)

you can also use any proprietary panasonic drive with any of the older SB16s and AWE32s such as the CT3900.... you will need to use the official panasonic driver, creative's own sbcd.sys only supports drives they sold... those drives can be used with any 40 wire single drive IDE cable... another drive that you can easily use is the Sony CDU-31A/CDU-33A.... it can be run with a CT1750 or CT2230 SB16, using the official sony drivers and a single drive 36 pin floppy drive cable... some mitsumi drives also work with these cards using a 40 wire single drive IDE cable

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-16-Sound-Blas … =item3a7812f54f

a late build CT2230 with panasonic CR-563B
has improved CT1745A-S mixer chip... no idea if it's DSP 4.12 or 4.13... pic too blurry

creative branded sony cdu33a
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sony-CDU33A-01-Creati … =item2c66b14492

with the CT2230 or CT1750, you can only use 1 drive at a time... the CT3900 you can use both Panasonic and IDE at the same time

Well, the CT2230 has DSP 4.13, but a bigger problem should be noted.
Early cd drives have problems reading modern CD-Rs . They require a certain difference of lands and pits to read reliably.
From my experience old blue or green CD-Rs work with intransparent data layer. The newer ones where you can nearly look through the disk do not work.
I couldn't find a source for fresh CD-Rs yet, that work on the very early drives.

I have two Sony CDU-33A in retro machines myself and they were one of the first inexpensive drives for PC. (Compared to SCSI Caddy f.e., Atapi was not existent)

taiyo yuden (JVC branded) CD-Rs should work fine on any drive... I never had any problem using them, even with finicky car CD players... they have a greenish blue dye (not dark blue or green or gold)

the CDU-33A was the fastest non-SCSI drive on the market back in 1994, but it does suck up a lot of CPU whereas the CR-563B doesn't

There are TWO BIG advantages to scsi over ide.

#1: uses only 1 IRQ not 2.
#2: Uses a LOT less cpu / is faster

#1 only applies if you are using both a SCSI HDD and SCSI CD-ROM drive
if not, then the argument is invalid
#2 might not apply if you use a non-bus mastering SCSI card, such as the AHA-152x series cards

TheMAN wrote:

#1 only applies if you are using both a SCSI HDD and SCSI CD-ROM drive
if not, then the argument is invalid
#2 might not apply if you use a non-bus mastering SCSI card, such as the AHA-152x series cards

#1 that would be pretty stupid, now wouldn't it?
#2 I get triple the hdd speed on my 386 with scsi verses isa and I have a 1542 card. ^.^

such a stupid combination would be possible... like people who run CT1770s with SCSI CD-ROM but with an IDE HDD 😉

TheMAN wrote:

such a stupid combination would be possible... like people who run CT1770s with SCSI CD-ROM but with an IDE HDD 😉

The SCSI port on the SoundBlaster is only for use with CD ROM drives. You can't boot a hard drive from it.

ummm yeah, I already said that!

next time, read before you reply! you're not contributing any helpful information or correcting any of my info