MSCDEX and SCSI CD Drives

[NeXT]

I have a box that I pulled out for other reasons and remembered I never got the CD drive setup on it.
There is an Adaptec 1540/1542C series SCSI card installed and a Sony CDU-561 caddy loader set to ID 2. The system normally boots off of IDE so the SCSI BIOS is not loaded.

I had to setup a SCSI CD drive before in an IBM 8595 however int hat case the machine was natively running SCSI so I simply gave MSCDEX ibmcdrom.sys and it worked. Here I am unsure if the same would apply.

I right now have two different possible drivers. The first is in a Sony "CD Rom Extensions" diskette which is from an older 34 pin Sony proprietary drive (I think) and the other is a set of files from Adaptec that state they are for the 7800 series cards. Does the SCSI card require a driver loaded into DOS before MSCDEX will do anything?
Secondly, is there a sony-specific SCSI driver out there I have not yet found or is there a more generic driver I can use?

 

[mR_Slug]

It's been a while. Generally IIRC the Adaptec aspi.sys driver (EZ-SCSI) handles all SCSI CD-ROMS. Then MSCDEX does it's thing. I don't recall needing to load any specific drivers for a particular SCSI CD-ROM drive. I've use a Sony drive like that before on Adaptec cards, I can't remember the exact model no. but it looks very similar.

I may have a boot disk around for the autoexec.bat/config.sys for the whole process somewhere.

The IBM driver did have some oddball thing where it only worked with the IBM drive.

I don't think you'll have much luck with the "CD Rom Extensions" diskette, but there might be something useful on it.

Additionally, I seem to recall an issue with modern versions of the driver reporting old drives as SCSI-3 and not working. There was a post a few months back.

 

[mR_Slug]

I don't recall needing to load any specific drivers for a particular SCSI CD-ROM drive.

Err...Just had a look through some old disk images one labeled "MSDOS SCSI CD-ROM BootDisk (mR_Slug).zip" so I must have made it, that has a driver for a Toshiba XM-3301 SCSI drive. Still though, IIRC (and clearly this is so-so) aspi.sys is important. I've got a 486 box with a SCSI drive on a non-bootable Future Domain SCSI adapter, I can look at. Two drivers under DOS rings a bell.

Config.sys
DEVICE=A:\16BITCD.SYS /D:mscd001

Autoexec.bat:
MSCDEX /D:mscd001

 

[njroadfan]

For Adaptec cards you need to load the card specific ASPI driver (aspi4dos.sys. etc) and then load Adaptec's aspicd.sys with "DEVICE=C:\ASPICD.SYS /D:MSCD001". After that you can load MSCDEX as usual with the matching device driver name.

 

[NeXT]

For Adaptec cards you need to load the card specific ASPI driver (aspi4dos.sys. etc) and then load Adaptec's aspicd.sys with "DEVICE=C:\ASPICD.SYS /D:MSCD001". After that you can load MSCDEX as usual with the matching device driver name.

I had a feeling it was that but it was one of those things you realize after you are already in bed for the night. Those drivers were on that 7800 series package so I will try loading those and see where it takes me.

 

[NeXT]

Okay you knew what package I had and yes, aspi4dos.sys is the aspi driver for my series card. I can get the card and CD drive to now behave.

http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a166/ballsandy/Computer related/IMG_0429.jpg

I did however need to make a tweak. I cannot use I/O port 330h because the Sound Blaster uses that and I was trying 230h and that was seemingly a no-go as well. I ended up setting the card to 340h and the driver as well using /P340.

http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a166/ballsandy/Computer related/CGS_8008.jpg

Turns out as well that the extra bits on that Sony diskette still worked even if the driver did not. Now I can lock and unlock the drive from DOS as well as eject or start a CD player.

http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a166/ballsandy/Computer related/CGS_8009.jpg

I also tossed Windows 3.11 the MPC copy of Myst I mentioned in the gaming subforum last week. It runs champ though "fullscreen" videos are a glacial 4fps.