I recently had the same situation on my system, and here's what I did to
resolve it. The correct method to use is to specify each drive on a
separate line in your config.sys, but combine them into a single line in
your autoexec.bat. As for specifying drive letters. you can only specify
the starting drive letter - each successive drive will receive the next
available letter after the first one. For example:

REM config.sys
device=c:\sb16\drv\sbcd.sys /d:mscd000 /p:220 /n:4
device=c:\sb16\drv\sbcd.sys /d:mscd001 /p:220 /n:4
device=c:\sb16\drv\sbcd.sys /d:mscd002 /p:220 /n:4
device=c:\sb16\drv\sbcd.sys /d:mscd003 /p:220 /n:4

REM autoexec.bat
REM The following must all be on the same line
MSCDEX /D:mscd000 /D:mscd001 /D:mscd002 /D:mscd003 /D:mscd004 /L:W

You can only run a single instance of MSCDEX, which is why you have to
(and are allowed to) combine multiple drive specs on a single line in
your autoexec.bat file. The final parameter, "/L:W", assigns the drive
letter W to the first of the CD-ROM drives, with the other 3 drives
being assigned the letters X, Y, and Z in order. Use whatever drive
letters are appropriate for your situation. Be aware that you may or may
not need a "Lastdrive=Z" statement in your autoexec.bat.

I claim ignorance on the /p:220 parameter listed above for each drive,
but if you experience IO Address conflicts it might be a good idea to
adjust those addresses to others that are currently unused. Lastly, I
assume all of this is to get the CD-ROM drives recognized in a pure DOS
session, rather than in a Windows 9x environment. Windows doesn't (or
shouldn't?) need any of this to recognize the drives, and drive letters
would be assigned in the CD-ROM section of the Device Manager in the
System applet of Control Panel.

Good luck, and post back if this still isn't what you need to make it
work.


Jeff Delzer



David Spencer wrote:
>
> When I tried the advice below, the system still booted up and said that all
> but mscd000 were not found. The correct number of drive letters were
> assigned however, they were all assigned to mscd000. This made the system
> extremely unreliable when reading from any of the cdrom drives. After a
> while, I'd get a "Not ready reading drive d" error.

<snip>

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