At 08:43 PM 5/4/1998  Dale Laluk  wrote:
>
>I have never had to deal with the multi I/O boards that are used in
>486 computers. (2 serial, 1 parallel, 2 IDE ports). Is there any
>driver software that has to be loaded for these boards ? I have a
>friends 486 that they tried to re-installed W3.11 on, and now the
>CD-Rom drive doesn't work. It is attached to one of the IDE ports.
>
>The sound board installed on the computer has an CDrom IDE connector
>on it also. Would I need driver software and how would I configure
>the sound board to handle the CD-Rom ?


Dale:

The I/O cards use standard hardware configuration (IRQs,
I/O  addresses, etc.) and do not need drivers (unless you
have a local bus I/O card, and then only to get 32-bit access
and other benefits).

If you have 2 IDE ports and you put the CD-ROM drive on the
secondary channel, you have to verify this channel is enabled
on the card (default is usually not enabled), that the CDROM
has the proper drive select setting jumpered, and that the
cabling is properly aligned and the power is connected.

Then you have to load the CDROM driver statement in the
CONFIG.SYS file (with the CDROM driver in the directory you
specify), and the MSCDEX.EXE statement in the AUTOEXEC.BAT.
You'll have to load Win3.11 drivers/software for the CDROM drive
to play sounds.

The secondary IDE channel is normally IRQ-15, so you need to
verify no other device is using this Interrupt.

I never liked Sound Card IDE controllers. Generally, they use the
tertiary IDE channel, so you have to check that there are no IRQ
conflicts. You have to set an enable jumper and run installation
software to gain this channel.

Hope that helps.

John Chin