VOGONS


First post, by Kurasiu

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I recently found an old ISA CD-ROM controller and decided to put it to my 486DX2-66 build (DataExpert 4407 v1.3 board, Cirrus Logic VLB graphic card with HDD/FDD/serial/paraller controllers) While the CD-ROM lights up and operates just fine, I'm completely unable to configure it, either via the oakcdrom/mscdex or shcdx/xgcdrom drivers (both return that no CD-ROM drives were found). Trying to load them via the standard DEVICEHIGH/LOADHIGH command and /D:MSCD001 name

I admit, I don't have much experience with the CD-ROM in 486 systems, so I'm not sure whether I'm doing something wrong, or any additional card driver is required to be loaded before the CD-ROM one.

Pic of the card:

Lv6aSYJ.png

Reply 1 of 3, by derSammler

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That's most likely not for IDE CD-ROM drives. Otherwise it would have jumpers to set base address and IRQ, and it wouldn't have that square chip in the middle.

Reply 2 of 3, by shamino

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It's been a few years, but I'm posting this in case somebody comes across the same card.

I have this same card, it came in the box with my Reveal 4X CDROM (actually a Goldstar GCD-R540) IDE/ATAPI drive back when it was new. I was (attempting) to use it yesterday and I compared with the photo, mine is the same.
The PLCC chip in the center is a PAL 20V8. I presume this is where the I/O and IRQ settings were programmed. Mine responds as a standard secondary IDE channel (port 0x170, IRQ 15). There could be cards that were programmed differently, but if they were all distributed with CDROM drives then I'm guessing all those clients had the card set up this same way.

I think this card was simplified with no jumpers in an attempt to minimize tech support calls. You do have to disable any conflicting IDE channel on your motherboard or another card though.

In the 90s I used this card without issue on a 486 to run the 4X ATA CDROM drive it came with.
Yesterday I tried to do the same thing and I can't get it to see the CDROM drive anymore. But I know it used to work with it. I don't know what I'm doing wrong but that's another topic.

Edit: Today I confirmed this card does work with an LS-120 drive. Never tried it with a hard drive but I don't see any reason it wouldn't work, it would just be seen on the secondary channel.

The attachment scaled_cropped.jpg is no longer available
Last edited by shamino on 2024-10-24, 22:22. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 3 of 3, by vstrakh

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derSammler wrote on 2020-03-06, 21:49:

That's most likely not for IDE CD-ROM drives. Otherwise it would have jumpers to set base address and IRQ, and it wouldn't have that square chip in the middle.

The chip in the middle is the programmable logic IC, extremely trivial and used for glue logic (address decoding typically).
The board is just at the right level of simplicity to be an IDE interface, and at the top edge of the card you can see "IDE EN" jumper, hardwired in enabled position by a trace on PCB.