If the drive isn't an IDE CD-ROM, then the OAK driver won't work with it.

Provide a bit more information please about what you have 😀

And also how you install the CD-ROM driver.

They're definitely IDE, I don't have anything else.
My first attempt was through the SB16 using the port there and SBIDE.SYS, which did not work.
The second attempt was the same using OAKCDROM, which did not work.
The third attempt was using a mitsumi cd room ISA card, like this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/common … _2010-10-17.jpg

That also did not work.

CTCU says the SB16 IDE is working, and lists a port and interrupt for it. I don't understand why the driver won't recognize the drive- and I've tried two.

Photo's help even more...

Earlier SB16's only have proprietary interfaces for cdroms, as in Sony, Mitsumi, or Panasonic(Creative) and they are not IDE compatible.
Some later SB16's and other brands cards might have IDE but You usually need the sound cards IDE driver.

CTCU reports it to be IDE and SBIDE.sys is on my driver disk. It doesn't appear to be working though.
E: The card is a CT2950 and the port does literally say IDE

If You can post photo's of the sound cards and rear of the cdrom drive then we can help much faster.

That Mitsumi card is likely for a mitsumi drive which were not IDE compatible.

EDIT. Yep that card has IDE. Have You tried changing the Master/Slave jumper on the cdrom?

http://imgur.com/a/n2fpu

Photos of the Mitsumi card, the IDE drive, and the SB16.
It was set for master, I think I might've left it as slave as I was messing around if it is in the pic.

And what model is the CD-ROM?

Have you tried connecting the CD-ROM to the standard IDE interface on the IO controller? You can remove the hard drive for this test.

Then just boot from a floppy. A Windows 98 start-up disk for example will have the CD-ROM drivers installed.

It's uh, a NEC CD-R 1400A
I'll try that, give me a few minutes. When I tried using the CD as slave it borked the whole thing and made it unbootable.

Ok that's a 8x speed IDE drive, so good that we know that 😀

I use bootdisks from here: http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm

Not sure if you have a USB Floppy drive to create them though. But if you have a machine with Windows 95 or 98, there is a program to create a start-up disk in control panel.

I had a 98SE disk handy and the drive does work if connected as master or slave- but it's impossible with the cables I have to make it work slaved to the hard disk.

Honestly it seems like my problem is probably related to the SBIDE drive, I'd love to get that working but /how/?

Are the cables too short?

With master and slave, make sure the drive at the very end is Master. And the drive closer to the controller slave. Also try cable select jumpers or check the hard drive datasheet for a compatibility jumper. Basically try all combinations 😁

Too short basically, I'll see if I can find longer ones.
Part of why I really want SBIDE to work is because, dangit, that's something someone would've done in 1991. I wanna do it!

Ok I see.

I've never used an IDE interface on a sound card, so I'm not sure if there is more to it I'm afraid.

With the CD-ROM connected to the sound card and the hard drive disconnected from the IO controller and booting form the boot disk, any luck?

BIOS gives an error and windows disk won't boot.
I have a second IO card, could that work? Doesn't seem like it- I try and it just poops out the first one.
E: I think I can probably rig them up, found some longer cables. Is there a major bottleneck having CD and HDD on the same cable?

Only for simultaneous access I think. I always use a single IDE cable, even on faster Pentium III machines, never noticed a difference to be honest. Also makes for simpler cable management 😁

The CTCM CTCU readme mentions loading SBIDE.SYS. Read the readme file and load that in config.sys after the ctcm ctcu lines.

I swear to god if it turns out my mistake was loading it /before/ those I'm going to explode.

This might be helpful as well

http://www.webpro.co.za/tutor/cd-setup.htm

Yeah I had a look there and tried all of the options listed.