Basics of CD-ROM support in DOS When MS decided to add CD-ROM support to DOS, instead of using a disk driver (like RAM disks) they opted for a redirector style driver (like a network filesystem). The primary reasons were probably that CD-ROMs use a different file sytem (ISO9660, essentially what .ISO files are) and sector size (the basic size unit of data read/written to/from a disk). What this means to a user is that you must first load one or more device drivers to physically access your CD-ROM drive; this driver exports a specific interface that is utilized by the next program (the CDEX, see below). Once a CD-ROM driver is loaded you must then load the CD-ROM extensions for DOS (here after refered to as CDEX) in order to obtain a drive letter. Originally each CD drive had different physical interfaces (e.g. like those on old Sound Blaster cards) for both how to speak to the CD drive and what commands were understood by the drive. This is why almost every CD drive comes with a DOS device driver disk. Later on CD drives were standarized (hence our AtapiCDD driver and why Windows 9x/NT, Linux, etc do not need a specific driver anymore), so nearly all CD-ROM drives > 4x speed, you can use pretty much any driver (assuming its not purposely tied to information returned by the drive). Caveat, updates to the standards have emerged, so depending on the age of the drive and driver will also effect which ones will work successfully. What this means, is that there are many freely available (though legally copyrighted with no explicit permission provided, only the implicit if you have our hardware you can use our driver) DOS drivers, such as the VIDE one (very small, usually pretty compatible), the OAK one (very compatible but takes more memory), etc. Each driver has a unique syntax, so you must read its accompaning documentation to determine what it is. At a minimal nearly all drivers support the /D:XXXX option (which often is the only one needed). This specifies the device name, it can be anything from 1 to 8 characters valid for a DOS filename (note: whatever name you choose should not match any filenames or directories you want to access, as DOS will access the driver not the filename [regardless if the file/directory has an extension or not]) and you only need to know what it is so you can pass this information to the CDEX. All CD-ROM drivers expected to be loaded in CONFIG.SYS, so you can not simply run the driver at the command prompt and have it load [if you try, at best nothing will happen, at worst you will need to reboot]. The exception to this is that most can be loaded after boot using a device driver loading program such as ddl, devlod, devload, etc. Some examples: Above in your config.sys, the following is the line that attempts to load your CD-ROM driver. DEVICE=C:\ATACD\SR_ASPI.SYS /D:MSCD000 /Q The device= indicates you are installing a device driver. C:\ATACD\ is the path to the driver and SR_ASPI.SYS is the driver's name (make sure this is correct for your setup, i.e. the file really exists). Next is the /D:MSCD000, this indicates for the driver to replace whatever its default device name is with MSCD000. The /Q is probably for quiet operation, not really sure there. In general, assuming your cd driver is: C:\DRIVER\MYDRIVER.SYS Then the following line in config.sys usually will work (assuming the default options for the cd driver work with your drive [not your case] DEVICE=C:\DRIVER\MYDRIVER.SYS /D:FDCD0000 The final step is to load the CDEX. For MS and PC DOS this is called MSCDEX.EXE, for DR DOS I believe it is NWCDEX.EXE, and for FreeDOS it is SHSUCDX.EXE. The basic syntax is similar to cddriver, just add /D:XXXX where XXXX is the device name passed to the device driver. e.g.: SHSUCDX /D:FDCD0000 Assuming this loads successfully it will create a new drive letter (usually the next free one) that you can use to access files on your CDs. This program should be ran from AUTOEXEC.BAT or from the command prompt. There are options to specify what drive letter you want (depends on the program the exact option) and can support multiple drives by passing the corresponding device names. Regarding this particular bug: "Error message is DVD/CD-ROM Device Driver Version 1.21 for ASPI Device Name = MSCD000 DVD/CD-ROM device driver is not installed" This indicates that for some reason that driver is failing to load, unfortunately it does not really tell why, but either you need some other switch or it simply is not compatible with your drive. In the latter case you need to use a different device driver. "C:\>C:/ATACD/SR-ASPI /D:MSCD000 Bad command or file name "C:\ATACD\SR-ASPI.SYS" This is a device driver so you can not simply run it at the command prompt. You must use a device= or devicehigh= line in config.sys or use a device driver loading program at the command prompt. "At the command I typed SHSUCDX /D:MSCD000 and got Can't open CD driver MSCD000. SHSUCDX Can't install." This is because the device driver failed to load earlier, hence the device 'MSCD000' does not exist. Hope this helps. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------- Additional comments: vide example . / Thu Mar 17 08:42:27 2005 Sorry forgot to include this. For VIDE, download the driver archive (search for VIDE or go to link mentioned above, ... I am assuming you either live somewhere where its legal or you otherwise have a right to it) Extract the files (probably self extracting, so just run it in an empty directory, if not uncompress it using an appropriate archiver, e.g. unzip). Copy vide-cdd.sys to somewhere permanent on your disk (note the full path to it). E.g. C:\DOS\vide-cdd.sys Edit your \CONFIG.SYS and add the following line (using proper path) device=C:\DOS\vide-cdd.sys /D:FDCD0001 Then edit your \AUTOEXEC.BAT and ensure it has a line similar to: shsucdx /D:FDCD0001 (the above assumes shsucdx.exe is in your path somewhere or the current directory, if not use its full path, e.g. C:\util\shsucdex /D:FDCD0001) That is all there is to adding CD-ROM support. The only trick is to obtain a device driver that works with your drive and you are legally entitled to use.