WIN 3.1 CD-ROM Drive

Factual Questions
1

My nephews have requested that I pull my 486 PC out of mothballs and configure it such that it can play the ancient DOS games that they cut their teeth on. Regrettably, these games are unplayable on a Pentium I or faster processor (run way too fast) and I am unable to load WIN 95 or better on this dinosaur PC.

So, Win 3.1 it is and everything seems to be working right except I cannot get the OS to “see” the CD-ROM drive. It would be nice to have the CD-ROM working in order to load some of the final generation DOS games, too.

I have done umpteen web searches for this problem, have tried them all and can’t seem to get anything to make the CD-ROM work.

Below are my autoexec.bat and config.sys.

Any assistance will be much appreciated.

Autoexec.bat

SET BLASTER=A220 15 D1 T4
C:\DOS\SMARTDRV.EXE
@ECHO OFF
C:\CRYSTAL\CS32MIX C=13 L=13
PROMPT $P$G
SET PATH=C:\CRYSTAL;C:\WINDOWS;C:\DOS
SET TEMP=C:\DOS
WIN

Config.sys

DEVICE=C:\DOS\SETVER.EXE
DEVICE=C;\DOS\HIMEM.SYS
DOS=HIGH
FILES=30
STACKS=9,256

2

You will need an atapi driver for that model cdrom

3

have you tried DOSBox?

4

Can you maybe just use DOSbox on a more modern machine?

http://www.dosbox.com/

I sometimes play really old abandonware games through this, so it is an option.

5

There’s also Good Old Games, which sells these sorts of games for ~$5. They give you a completely DRM-free download that works just fine on modern computers.

6

This is true, although I seem to remember there being a generic ATAPI driver that would work with just about anything. You’ll also (probably, this was ages ago) need to set up MSCDEX.EXE, which comes with DOS, to get Windows 3.1 to recognize a CD-ROM drive.

7

You need to load MSCDEX and an ATAPI driver. MSCDEX is included with MS-DOS 6.22, and you can find oakcdrom.sys online or on a Windows 95/98 CD, which is the more or less standard generic ATAPI driver. If you are lucky enough to still have the manufacturer-provided ATAPI driver somewhere, then you can use that. But you will need to review the documentation for that driver to find out what type of config switches you need.

Put “DEVICEHIGH=<path-to-ATAPI-driver> /D:CDROM” in config.sys and “LH <path to MSCDEX.EXE> /D:CDROM /E” in autoexec.bat

The text following /D: is a user-specified label that ties the driver and MSCDEX together. MSCDEX has other switches that control how it uses memory and buffer space, which you can look up to tune performance and memory usage.

8

I concur with Wheeljack in toto.

Site[del]s[/del] to try:

http://www.mywindowspage.com/
[del]oldfiles.org.uk apparently now defunct

Mods, I don’t think [del]either of these sites violate[/del] this site violates any file sharing rules, but please accept my apologies if I’m wrong.

9

The relevant entries from my startup files, for example:

CONFIG.SYS
DEVICE=C:\DOS\CPQIDECD.SYS /D:IDECD001

This is the actual CDROM driver, which comes with the drive. My particular copy has worked with a wide variety of other drives, however; I don’t know what that’s about.

AUTOEXEC.BAT
C:\WINDOWS\MSCDEX.EXE /S /D:IDECD001 /L:D
This is the Microsoft end of the exchange, which allows DOS and Windows to communicate with the above driver.

MSCDEX should be in your Windows or DOS directory. I’m not sure where you’d get the driver loaded in CONFIG.SYS. I’d give you mine but my DOS machine has no way to write files to anything my other computers can read.

10

Dangit, should have previewed. Also, your AUTOEXEC.BAT should be devoid of smilies. That’s the / L : D argument, which designates the drive letter.

11

Note on the above that missed the edit window: scroll down to the DOS section.

12

Ah, if only Microsoft had the foresight to include them, we wouldn’t have had generations of disgruntled DOS users. Windows would never have been necessary. If only.

13

This takes me back a bit…

You want something like SMARTDRV C+ - see here.

This should be the very first line.

NO! You don’t want your temporary files going into your DOS directory.

SET TEMP=C:\TEMP
SET TMP=%TEMP%

Make sure you have a C:\TEMP directory, of course.

Should be DOS=HIGH,UMB

This is on the low side. Try FILES=60.

If you’re running DOS games as well, you may need EMM386.

14

If I were her, I’d get a Windows 95/98 boot floppy and boot off it, watching to the screen to see which CD driver works, then I’d copy that file off to the hard drive and use it.

The OAK one may work, but it might be another one.