found a really nice 8x parallel CDROM \ VOGONS

found a really nice 8x parallel CDROM

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First post, by ahendricks18

Posted on 2015-04-03, 19:25

ahendricks18 Offline

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Found a nice backpack 8 speed cd drive the other day. Really clean and i got the power cord with it too. I'll have to go back to look for a parallel cable because the one I grabbed is Male on both ends and the "computer" port on the drive is also M. Maybe I can get an adapter at radioshack too. But anyway, how would I set it up under windows 3.1? Im guessing I'll need a driver for it. Would I have to edit the config.sys and autoexec.bat? Also I was trying to llay the game "Stunts" on my DOS/WIN 3.1 Packard bell Legend 386X. The issue is, when I go to race it says "out of memory" along with some other stuff. I have 4mb ram, and I enable EMS in the BIOS, so I dont know. The game is 1990 and the pc is 1991 so I doubt it is actually out of ram.

Main: AMD FX 6300 six core 3.5ghz (OC 4ghz)
16gb DDR3, Nvidia Geforce GT740 4gb Gfx card, running Win7 Ultimate x64
Linux: AMD Athlon 64 4000+, 1.5GB DDR, Nvidia Quadro FX1700 running Debian Jessie 8.4.0

Reply 1 of 7, by dogchainx

Posted on 2015-04-03, 20:18

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http://www.minuszerodegrees.net/backpack_cdro … kpack_cdrom.htm

Has info...

386DX-40MHz-8MB-540MB+428MB+Speedstar64@2MB+SoundBlaster Pro+MT-32/MKII
486DX2-66Mhz-16MB-4.3GB+SpeedStar64 VLB DRAM 2MB+AWE32/SB16+SCB-55
MY BLOG RETRO PC BLOG: https://bitbyted.wordpress.com/

Reply 2 of 7, by smeezekitty

Posted on 2015-04-04, 00:44

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Be aware that the driver takes a large amount of conventional memory (31K+)

Reply 3 of 7, by Jolaes76

Posted on 2015-04-04, 20:36

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Also I was trying to llay the game "Stunts" on my DOS/WIN 3.1 Packard bell Legend 386X.

You may be running low on Conventional RAM.
EMS can be provided by EMM386.
Also check for installation/missing file errors...

"Ita in vita ut in lusu alae pessima iactura arte corrigenda est."

Reply 4 of 7, by sliderider

Posted on 2015-04-05, 02:58

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I have one of those sealed in shrinkwrap. I found it on garbage day about 10 years ago.

Reply 5 of 7, by ahendricks18

Posted on 2015-04-05, 15:17

ahendricks18 Offline

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I ended up installing an IDE CD-rom because I could not find the cable that I needed, but I got the IDE CD-ROM working quite easily, but now I am still having issues with ram. When I go to play any game, at first Stunts gave me the out of RAM error but now it won't even start. I've tried it through dos and win 3.1. I also tried running other games (TES Arena, Ultima Underworld 1) and no dice. I'll edit w/ more details later.

Also, I did try using EMM386 and it says its active and is even in the autoexec file but something else I noted was in the BIOS there is a setting for EMS memory, so I enabled it. You can choose the amount up to (I think) 8 mb or leave it as "OK" which I don't know what that does, but I tried setting it to the amount of ram it scans for when it boots (640k Base and 03456k extended) which if I set it in the BIOS to either 3456k or 4 meg I get either "Cannot allocate EMS- Insufficient memory found" or Error loading Operating system".

Reply 6 of 7, by Jolaes76

Posted on 2015-04-05, 15:51

Jolaes76 Offline

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What you can reserve as EMS in BIOS can and must be driven by a proprietary chipset driver. Without a driver it is just wasted from your precious 4 mb. Emm386 simulates EMS a different way, it cannot deal with this type of EMS. If EMM386 works, leave the BIOS setting at 0 (zero) kb.

Last edited by Jolaes76 on 2015-04-06, 09:39. Edited 1 time in total.

"Ita in vita ut in lusu alae pessima iactura arte corrigenda est."

Reply 7 of 7, by alexanrs

Posted on 2015-04-06, 00:08

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That parallel CDROM looks like an epic way to install CD games on a really retro laptop. For desktop PCs I fail to see a reason to use it instead of a newer IDE DVD-ROM. Also, the parallel driver probably has no way of sending audio to the soundcard's mixer.

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