There is nothing special about VLB motherboards in relation
to CD readers.  I am assuming you do not have on-board IDE,
there are no PCI slots, and the CD is IDE.  If you are not
installing the reader as a slave, you should first check
CMOS settings to make sure your IDE channels are properly
enabled.  It is also possible your motherboard will not
support a secondary IDE channel.  This is usually
the case when an old socket 3 board won't  recognize
a cd reader. Install the reader as a slave to
the primary hard disk.  I have successfully done this on
386's, so I don't think the advanced age of the BIOS will
be a problem for an ATAPI reader, although you may have to
load the dos driver in config.sys with the device= command.

If your using a sound card IDE interface, you probably are
defaulting to the secondary channel.  Some CD IDE drivers
will provide the necessary support for IDE not provided from
the BIOS.  Typically you have to specify this with switches
on the device statement in config.sys when you load the DOS
driver.  IF you don't load the device driver win9x will not
find the reader.  Check your sound card / cd reader documentation
for details.  The dos driver will not slow the cd reader
any more than it already is because you are using an ISA interface
that probably will not support PIO mode 3 or 4.

Years ago I was able to get newer 486's to recognize four
IDE Devices using a Promise VLB IDE adapter.  The secondary
channel in such an adapter is ISA, so it is a little slower,
same for the ISA sound card interface.  If you already have
a Promise or Cirrus Logic VLB adapter, you should check to see
if it has jumpers to enable the secondary channel.  The factory
default setting is disabled.
I remember two 486sx motherboards that refused all my attempts
to get a secondary IDE channel up and running.  If your
motherboard has fewer than 3 VLB slots and no 72 pin simms
you probably will have to go with the BIOS upgrade card.



-----Original Message-----
From: PCBUILD - Personal Computer Hardware discussion List
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Alan Priol
Sent: Wednesday, May 03, 2000 4:16 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [PCBUILD] VLB motherboard


Will a VLB socket3 motherboard accept a CD Reader? Putting together a
computer using a collection of spare parts and so far am unable to get the
M/B to recognize the CD Reader. If this is not possible, will do things the
hard way.
        Thanks for any suggestions.

        Regards
        Alan Priol.

                  Visit our website regularly for FAQs,
               articles, how-to's, tech tips and much more
                  http://nospin.com - http://nospin.org

         The NOSPIN Group Promotions is now offering the NOSPIN
        File Download CD, Abit's Gentus Linux, Linux Power CD and
      the RedHat Linux CD.  All CDs are always provided at COST!!!
                      http://nospin.com/promotions