From: "Peter Darrach" :Sent: Sunday, August 13, 2000 10:37 PM
Subject: Re: [PCBUILD] CD drive not recognized


> At 11:57 PM 8/12/00 -0500, you wrote:
> >From: "Peter Darrach" :Sent: Saturday, August 12, 2000 1:50 PM
> >Subject: [PCBUILD] CD drive not recognized
> >
> >
> > > Hi People!
>
>
>
> >Snippity,snippity, snip............
>
>
>
> > > SNIP> > >
> > > Anyway, I'm lost! Can anyone lead me out of the wilderness? How can I
get
> > > the CD recognized?
> >
> >Peter,
> >
> >You do not mention whether you ever installed the drivers for the CD Rom
or
> >not.  Dos and Windows 3.1, and Windows for Workgroups need real mode
drivers
> >installed for the CD Rom to work.
>
> Mary:  Sorry about that. I did install the drivers- several times. I used
> the ones that came with the CD. I guess though that I am a bit confused. I
> figured that the drive would be recognized by CMOS before any drivers were
> installed. If I recall correctly, they advised me that no drive had been
> located.
>
> Despite my confusion, after I received your message I decided to try my
> Win98 SE Startup disk and see what it would do. As you know the disk
> includes CD support. Lo and behold it worked! I did get a message to REM
> the HIGHSCAN from the Config.sys file before proceeding with the Win 95
> installation.  I did that and rebooted with the 98 Startup disk in drive
> "A", accepted to start the computer with CD assistance. The CD drivers
> loaded and I ended up with the "A" prompt. I changed that to "E"- the CD
> drive. After inserting the Win 95 upgrade CD, I typed SETUP at the prompt
> and proceeded with the Win 95 installation. It is in and working. Even
> though the CD drive is not recognized by CMOS, it works. How and why, I
> know not.
>
> Answers and further advice welcomed!
>
> Peter Darrach
>

Peter,

Glad to now you got Win95 installed.  If my memory serves me right you
should be able to check whether you actually installed the drivers in any of
your previous installations by checking the Config.sys.file and
Autoexec.bat.  When you upgraded to Win95 it should have REMed the CD
Drivers in the Config.sys, Autoexec.bat and made a note that Win95 made this
change to the file.

When the first CD-ROM drives came out there was no standard for connecting
them to make them work in a PC, so the CD-ROM makers supplied their own
controllers.  These proprietary controllers were narrowed down to 3 types of
controllers, Panasonic, Sony, and Mitsumi.  Creative Labs started adding the
CD-ROM controllers to their sound cards so now instead of a separate
controller for the CD-ROM, it could be connected to the sound card.  You
needed the drivers for the exact interface you would be attaching the CD-ROM
to, and they were added in the Config.sys and Autoexec.bat.

At this time the IDE interface was used for hard drives.  The IDE
(Integrated Drive Electronics) interface had a maximum size of 504MB and
could contain only 2 drives.  CD Rom drives were attached to interfaces on
Sound cards or their own controllers.  Drivers for the CD-ROMs were loaded
from the Config.sys and Autoexec.bat.  With the introduction of the EIDE
(Enhanced Integrated Drive Electronics) drive interfaces, the maximum disk
size increased to more than 8GB, transfer rates increased to more than twice
what IDE was capable of and the number of drives a PC could have doubled, up
to 4.  The ATAPI (AT Attachment Packet Interface) Standard allows an ATAPI
compliant CD-ROM drive to be treated exactly as though it were an EIDE
drive.  Using ATAPI-capable hardware and software drivers, you can mix and
match different types of drives on the same EIDE controller, thanks to
EIDE's support for the ATAPI standard.  This allowed for the use of a
Universal CD-ROM driver which had not been possible with proprietary CD-ROM
interfaces.  Unlike a hard drive there is no reason for the BIOS to detect
the parameters of the CD-ROM drive as the device drivers handle this.
Other ATAPI compliant devices can be installed on the EIDE controllers such
as ATAPI Zip drives and ATAPI Tape Devices which are also not detected in
the BIOS.

Mary Wolden

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