Acmlm's Board - I2 Archive - Hardware/Software - Old computer won't load CD-ROM drivers
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FreeDOS
Posts: 1509/1657 |
Old drives tend to not read CD-RW discs, since the "dips" (actually discolored areas to simulate a dip) aren't as prominent as silver-pressed CD-ROMs or CD-Rs. Actually, I have a couple of drives here that won't even read a CD-R. It's simply the case of the drive being built before CD-burners were readily available or even invented, so there wasn't any testing done to make sure the drive can read the slightly less subtle burn areas of a CD-R(W)
There's not much you can do except get a newer drive. "MultiRead" is a label on some drives that basically guarentees compatibility with CD-Rs and CD-RW, though not all drives have it even though they can read them. |
neotransotaku
Posts: 3358/4016 |
What exactly do you mean by trying it? You can see if you can find specs for the drive and that should tell you if it can read RW or not. Also, there are programs that will give specs of a drive as well if you can't find the white papers online. One that comes to mind is DVDInfo (warning, lots of ads  ) |
HyperLamer
Posts: 5285/8210 |
Alright, that got it (though it required some trickery since I booted off a floppy) but this drive won't read CDRW.  Any way to tell if a particular one will without trying it? |
FreeDOS
Posts: 1503/1657 |
Hmm... I haven't dealt with DOS in a while, but I think I remember this.
First of all, you'll probably want to make the CD-ROM a secondary master unless you already have a secondary slave.
Secondly:
In C:\CONFIG.SYS, you need this line:
DEVICE=C:\DOS\OAKCDROM.SYS /D:MSCD001
In C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT, you need this line:
MSCDEX /D:MSCD001
mmk, that should do it. now reboot. |
HyperLamer
Posts: 5228/8210 |
Well I got my old computer to start up (turned out to be a bad power supply; I figured it out when the power LED started flickering  ), but it won't load any CD-ROM drivers. It starts up and detects the hard disk and CD-ROM (does it matter that the HD is primary master and the CD-ROM is secondary slave?) but doesn't actually assign the CD-ROM a drive letter. On the hard disk is a program called mscdex.exe, which is supposed to be able to load CD-ROM drivers like the oakcdrom.sys also on the hard disk. No matter what combination of different options and filenames I try, though, it either doesn't find the file or says I used an invalid option (but doesn't tell me what like it would if I really had done so). The invalid option error usually comes up if I specify a more-than-8-character filename for the driver (including extension) so I tried naming it just 'o.sys' but no luck. |
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