If it's identified in the bios ok, it should just be a case of trying the correct dos driver, there are lots of them.

I usually use SHSUCDX in place of MSCDEX, and then QCDROM.sys

http://www.hiren.info/downloads/dos-files

I've yet to find any incompatibility between ATAPI compliant drives and ATAPI compliant drivers.

The bios doesn't detect any optical drives. They aren't detect until start up files run. Maybe all of these drives I tested earlier are faulty. I just tested my old 4x drive, and it is detected. I am glad I tested it, as I found one of my Complete Ultima VII discs in there.

What I mean't is that You normally see it during post before any autoexec.bat and config.sys are loaded. You probably won't see it in the bios gui.

My Lucky star motherboard picks it up at the same time as the hdd during the post.

This board is weird as it seems only to detect IDE hard disks, and waits for a driver to assign an optical drive on the IDE channel.

I tried qcdrom.sys, and it still does not detect the drives. I am assuming that these drives are bad, as they are from old pulls and were in storage for a while. It is too bad, since they have black bezels and this case and everything thing else is black, so a beige drive is going to stand out.

EDIT: I just read on another thread where feipoa mentions that a 4DPS bios 1.72f will detect ATAPI drives before posting. I cannot flash my bios to 1.72f and will have to go through the options we discussed in my other thread. Perhaps this bios is the issue with these drives, as I just pulled more from storage, and they also don't work. So far, the drives that do work were manufactured up to 1997. I am thinking of tinkering with the ide port on my SB16.

I tested 11 drives, and only the two oldest drives will be detected by a cd rom driver. One of the 11 which did not work is a brand new laptop slot load with a 40 pin adapter.

Check the drives on a known good motherboard (or a USB-ATA adapter).

I will test them on my test rig, probably tomorrow, just to be sure. However, with such a high failure rate, I think that it is due to this board's bios. I am looking into getting a 1.72f bios, but I don't have a bios programmer and this bios cannot be flashed (it is UV.) I have been reading on hot flashing, but it sounds rather risky due to potential shorts.

Make sure that's and IDE port on Your SB16, not a proprietary Creative(panasonic), Sony, or Mitsumi connector.

It is a CT2950. I am searching for instructions on using the IDE interface.

EDIT: I am not having luck with this, either. The software indicates that the interface is enabled and has no conflicts, but none of the drives work.

I think You need to update the bios. There is no information about cdrom drives on the IDE interface in any of the sb16 drivers that I can find.
That must mean that it's the motherboard that is supposed to pick it up.

I may look into a bios service to get the bios chip I need, with the 1.72f bios.

I'm an idiot. I placed the qcdrom.sys line in the wrong part of my multi-config.sys. This driver works to detect the newer drives. For whatever reason, VIDE-CDD.SYS and the Tomato 4DPS (at least with the 1.5 bios) do not like a lot of drives. Now that I fixed my config.sys, qcdrom.sys is loading a DVD-ROM drive. I suppose when I get tired, I should stop tinkering with this PC! I will still seek a solution to get the 1.72f bios.

I use the Toshiba driver. You can find it here:
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/util_e.html

I have also used an older version of the Acer driver in the past:
http://files.mpoli.fi/drivers_1/CD/ACERCD/

The qcdrom.sys is working for this cd-rw/dvd-rom drive, and uses 2k. I think I used the Toshiba driver in the past.