Help! DOS Won't Recognise My CD-ROM Drive

[Sprattyboy32]

I have an old 486 pc that used to run Windows 3.1 / DOS 6.22 and a Panasonic / Matsushita CR-563 2x CD-Rom drive when I bought it. It used to work fine. Then I Installed Windows 95, which deleted Windows 3.1. Still things were fine. Then I used Powerquest Partition Magic 8.0 to create another primary partition, and then installed first DOS 6.22 & then Windows 3.1 on this partition. All is fine, I can boot whichever operating system I want, and things are great except, and hereÂ’s the problem:
DOS 6.22 / Windows 3.1 cannot detect my CD-ROM drive, but it still works fine in Windows 95. I tried using boot floppies with generic CD-ROM drivers, which seem to install, but when they are loading in DOS they end up in a message that says no drive detected or something. How can I get DOS to recognise the CD-ROM drive as it used to work fine?

 

[killians45]

you'll need to configure the autoexec.bat and config.sys

 

[Sprattyboy32]

what do i need to put in them?

 

[MST3kGeek]

well if the drivers are installed correctly and theres no cd in the drive its not gonna detect anything on the drive so first make sure thats not it.

i havent messed with DOS in some time, but yeah dunno why a generic driver wouldnt work. you could try searching for your drives specific DOS driver online or people who have had similar problems. and then yeah, add it to the autoexec if you get one that works. i know that really doesnt help much but i tried

good luck

 

[killians45]

in Dos you have to put the fully qualified path of the driver for the CD-Rom, drive designation, etc. Look up/google for autoexec.bat and config.sys examples. An example (depending on driver name) is

Autoexec.bat

C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\MSCDEX.EXE /D:NCI000 /V

Config.sys

DEVICE=C:\CDROM\IDE-CD.SYS /D:NCI000

here is a site with examples listing the cdrom type:

http://www.techadvice.com/tech/C/CDROM_DOSSU.htm

 

[ekÆsine]

Sprattyboy32 use the generic cd-rom driver oakcdrom.sys. add it to your DOS directory. change the directory folder names depending on where you put oakcdrom.sys & MSCDEX.EXE. checnge the directory if these files are not in the root directory of your D: drive along with command.com. you can change the cd-rom drive letter to anything you want if you dont want F:

config.sys:
=============
DEVICEHIGH=D:\oakcdrom.sys /F:mscd001

autoexec.bat:
================
LOADHIGH=D:\MSCDEX.EXE /F:MSCD001

if this doesn't work I think your problem is that DOS requires you to install it only on the first primary hard disk on the first primary partition.

 

[ekÆsine]

the config I showed you assumes your win95 is on primary partition 1 drive C:, and your 3.1/DOS is drive D: on pri part 2, put config & autoexec into your primary partition 2 along with 3.1/dos

 

[Sprattyboy32]

Cheers people, i'm off to bed for now but i'll try what you said tommorrow. Thanks again for offering advice, much appreciated.

 

[Sprattyboy32]

Solved!

Hi everyone, I think the sleep did me good, I woke up in a much more sensible mood. Anyway, searched the Panasonic website for old drivers and installers and got a file called 56x_dos.exe. Ran that in Win 3.1 & it installed the CD-ROM drive and everything works fine. My wise old machine up and running again! Hurray!

Its Win 3.1 & 95 dual boot, but now who needs Win 95??? Keep It Old Skool!

Thanks for your help everyone!