I got yesterday some old computers which came without optical drives. If I install a CD-ROM or DVD drive on a 386 or 486 computer, would it work without extra expansion cards just by connecting to the IDE connector?
working - mostly yes for 486, dunno for 386, bugs were common back then though;
booting - only if you're lucky (usually done via floppy);
mostly amended by an additional controller;
I've tested CD drives on a 386SX and up. They work fine. Also don't see a reason for DVD drives not to work although I didn't test them.
Just configure them as slave (hdd as master) and connect to IDE cable. ISA controllers have only one IDE channel for two drives (master & slave).
Requests are also possible... /msg kixs
AFAIK your controller must support ATAPI.
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isf you use scsi, cd and dvd drives work fine with 8088 machines.
It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.
I've used standard IDE optical drives on 386DX and SX computers. I always use the same controller card, an ISA GoldStar Prime 2. It can't boot from it, but the CD driver and MSCDEX load fine and it fully works under MS-DOS 😀
These propriety interface cards, or connectors on sound cards for Philips / Panasonic / Sony are for the really old drives. They are usually single or double speed if I remember correctly.
wrote:AFAIK your controller must support ATAPI.
Not sure about that as I use ISA controllers from 1990/91.
Requests are also possible... /msg kixs
wrote:AFAIK your controller must support ATAPI.
No, ATAPI is a protocol how to transfer data packets through ATA/IDE interface.
An ISA bus ATA/IDE "controller" is nothing more but an address decoder and a buffer.
So yes, most likely it will work on a single IDE interface, if you set hard drive as master, and the optical drive as slave.
Sometimes, the master needs to be told there is a slave connected.
Some sound cards have extra IDE interfaces so you can put the optical drive there.
wrote:wrote:AFAIK your controller must support ATAPI.
Not sure about that as I use ISA controllers from 1990/91.
And I don't think you need to be sure about at all. Any standard generic multi IO card from the era with at least one IDE channel should work. At least this is what my experience is during the days and also today. Just remember to adjust optical drive as slave and your HDD as master (sometimes they are adjusted as "single drive" and it should not be) if they are on the same IDE channel (i.e. on the same IDE cable - most of the pre 1994 IDE controllers are single channel).
Another option is a sound card with IDE interface. There is the small problem of need for manually adjusting the resources (IO base, IRQ, etc.) (I never seen a PnP 386 yet) but when it is done properly, it will work perfectly, too.
Booting from CD-ROM will not be possible in most of the cases though. It must either be supported by your motherboard BIOS (never seen it in any 386 yet) or your controller should have its own BIOS that supports this feature (rare thing in ISA IDE / multi I/O cards).
There are some much older drives which requires propriety cards (or supporting sound cards with those interfaces) like very old Sony, Mitsumi or Panasonic/Creative drives, but I assume this is not the case.
GA-6VTXE PIII 1.4+512MB
Geforce4 Ti 4200 64MB
Diamond Monster 3D 12MB SLI
SB AWE64 PNP+32MB
120GB IDE Samsung/80GB IDE Seagate/146GB SCSI Compaq/73GB SCSI IBM
Adaptec AHA29160
3com 3C905B-TX
Gotek+CF Reader
MSDOS 6.22+Win 3.11/95 OSR2.1/98SE/ME/2000
This piece of junk is what I bought for 10 euros. It has some old 386 motherboard inside, but the battery has been leaking. Don't know yet if it can be fixed or anything else. At least the AT case should be suitable for other motherboards.
Just remember that one man's junk is another man's treasure 😀
This looks like a very nice AT case (even has an LCD display, which is not something you get on all AT cases).
I've been looking very hard for a nice AT case myself (with an LCD display) and recently managed to find one.
So, I think you got a very good deal. Just a bit of dusting and cleaning will make it look as good as new.
If the outer case has some scratches on, then a quick re-spray should do the job.
Nice case, with no missing drive bay covers (Once you add a 3.5 floppy) even get room for both a CD drive and the 5.25 floppy if you want to keep it, yeh your already off to a good start!
Hopefully the existing motherboard can be saved but if not then at least you have everything else 😀
I've had issues where certain DVD drives would only read CD's. Probably driver-related, as the DVD drives were too new for the systems. But other than that, they worked.
