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CDROM drive access and use

Aleph One Support recomendations.

Efforts are being made to get the Powertec softloaded SCSI hostdriver for ATAPI/IDE CDROM drives to work with the 32bit Windows95/98 ASPI driver.

There are currently two drivers available that can be used that enable a PC card to have access to an ATAPI/IDE CDROM drive unit. The DOS driver has always been supplied with all versions of PC card software. The new Protected Mode or 32bit CDROM driver for Windows 95/98 is available from this site but will only work with !PC 2.xx and is supplied with PCPro 3.xx

Both drivers use the RiscOS CDFS, so if the RiscOS config settings for the CDROM driver/s are incorrect or the CDROM drive is not functioning correctly within the CDFS without adding any additional RiscOS software or patches, then the PC card drivers will generally fail to function as expected.

The Protected Mode CDROM driver overcomes the problems encountered when trying to use CDROM's with long file names or non ISO9660 standard formats such as "Joliet". There is no Audio CD function and many8X and faster CDROM drives have problems.

RiscOS CDROM config settings.

If this setting is always "0" and you have a Cumana 300i CD-ROM, then you need to read Cumana's own support pages on the subject.

If you are using StrongARM then you should also configure the Buffers to None. 8X+ Speed CDROM's can create problems.

DOS CDROM Driver.

PCPro3.xx

1. Place DOS Bootable floppy in floppy drive.
2. Start up the PC card.
3. Type "SETUP" at the A: prompt.
4. Only respond Y to the CDROM driver and N to everything else.
5. When returned to the A: prompt remove the floppy
6. Press Ctrl+Alt+Delete to reset the PC card

You should find the following.

The drive C partition containing a Pcp3_drv\Cdrom Directory. In the directory three files Nwcdex/exe Hpc_cd/sys and Readme/txt.

In the CONFIG/SYS you should find the device command line with the path and file name for the Hpc_cd/sys file.
DEVICE=C:\PCP3_DRV\CDROM\HPC_CD.SYS

In the AUTOEXEC/BAT you should find the execute command line with the path and file name for the Nwcdex/exe also the command extensions for the driver name and letter allocation of "M".
C:\PCP3_DRV\CDROM\NWCDEX.EXE /D:MSCD000 /L:M

PCPro2.xx

1. Place their original PCPro software floppy disc in the drive unit.
2. Select !PCinstall.
3. Version 2.13 will display a Desktop Window asking if you have read the manual. You should have at least read these instructions so select "Yes".
4. In the Options Window select the "Install drivers into DOS partition" and "Install CD ROM driver support software" then the "Install" button.
5. Drag the drive C: partition that you wish the DOS CDROM driver to be installed, into the "PC Partition" Window and select the "Continue" button.
6. For Windows 95 or 98 change the DOS directory entry to Windows.Command. For any other setup where the DOS OS is not in a directory called DOS then you will need to edit this entry to match. It is safe at this point to look into the partition but you must close the Window before you continue.
7. Press the "Continue" button. After a period of time you will get an "Installation complete" message.
8. Press the "OK" button and remove the PCPro floppy from the drive unit.

You should find the following.

The drive C partition containing a Drivers\CDROM Directory. In the directory three files Mscdex/exe Hpc_cd/sys and Readme/txt.

In the CONFIG/SYS you should find the device command line with the path and file name for the HPC_CD.SYS file.
DEVICE=C:(Path name)\HPC_CD.SYS
The (Path name) is determined by the DOS directory entry in step 6 above.

In the AUTOEXEC/BAT you should find the execute command line with the path and file name for the MSCDEX.EXE also the command extentions for the driver name.
C:\DOS\MSCDEX /D:MSCD000 You may manually edit this line to have the CDROM drive letter to you requirements by adding
/L:M
to the end of the line in this case showing the letter allocation of "M".
C:\DOS\MSCDEX /D:MSCD000 /L:M

Manual and older drivers.

PCPro2.xx

1. Place their original PCPro software floppy disc in the drive unit.
2. Copy the Drivers file from the floppy to a RISC OS hard drive location.
3. Change the file type to "Archive"
4. Using !SparkFS or !SparkPlug to view the contents of the "Drivers" archive. [If you do not have a copy you will find a copy of !SparkPlug in the "Unpackers" Directory on the PCPro floppy.]
5. Copy the the "Drivers" directory and contents on to a DOS formatted floppy.
6. Start up the PC card and using XCOPY command or similar copy the "Drivers" directory from the DOS formatted floppy to the route of your C: hard drive.
7. Using a text editor add the command lines to the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files with suitable path names. Read the PCPro2.xx under the heading of "You should find the following." to read what the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files should contain.

A1CD.SYS

To install the A1CD.SYS driver manually follows the same steps as for PCPro2.xx. You need to copy the file MSCDEX.EXE and A1CD.SYS to a DOS formatted floppy. Use the PC card and its OS to copy the files to a location on your drive C:. Then edit the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files and use the heading of "You should find the following."in PCPro2.xx for reference.

Protected Mode CDROM driver (32bit).

PCPro3.xx

1. Open the start menu, and choose Control Panel off the Settings menu.
2. Double-click on the Add new hardware icon.
3. Answer No when Windows offers to search for your new hardware.
4. Select SCSI controllers from the list that appears.
5. Click Have disk
6. Type A:\Win95\CDROM into the writeable box and press OK.
7. Click OK to install the Aleph One RISC OS-hosted device controller, and let Windows restart itself when it finishes the installation.

PCPro2.xx

This version of the driver does not support Audio functions, such as the CD+ format that has a mix of Data and Audio Tracks. This will be in a later release or you use the Work Around.

The installer will remove lines mentioning CD_HPC.SYS and MSCDEX from your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT automatically, (unless they are already REMmed out or have been removed) and add the hpc_cd.sys, armaspi.sys and armedit.sys to the [SafeList] (unless they have already been added). For more details read Safe List, Autoexec and Config files.

NOTE:- Because of the number of versions of Windows95/98 you may find that some of the buttons that are stated in the instructions below are not the same as you are presented with. Select a button with a similar name.

1. Copy the files on this disk, or unzip them if supplied as a ZIP file, into C:\DRIVERS\CDROM. If you can't easily do this (e.g due to this being on a Direct SCSI drive you cannot access from the desktop) then unzip/copy them onto another drive or a floppy disk - and change references to C:\DRIVERS\CDROM below accordingly.
2. Remove all CD/s from CDROM drive/s and start !PC and Windows95
3. Go to Control Panel. Double Select on 'Add new hardware' to start the wizard.
4. Select 'No' in answer to 'Do you want windows to search for your new hardware?' Select 'Next'.
5. Scroll down the window to select 'SCSI controllers'. Select 'Next'.
6. Select 'Have Disk', and either browse to, or type in C:\DRIVERS\CDROM and select 'OK'. 'Aleph One RISCOS-hosted devices controller' should be listed. select 'Next'.
7. Even if there is a conflict found you will have a new window select 'Next' and then 'Finish'.
8. You will be asked if you wish to restart your computer, select yes.
9. On restarting Windows95 go to 'My Computer'; if no conflicts were found a CDROM icon will be shown and the installation is complete. If no icon is shown follow the instructions in the Device Conflicts: section below.

Trouble Shooting

There are three possibilities:

• * Red Cross icon: The driver is disabled

  The device is not enabled in the current configuration. Follow the instructions in 'Resource Conflicts' above to enable the device under the 'General' tab.

• * Yellow Disc icon: The driver is not working
  1. Most likely is that the resources are not set or Windows thinks there is a conflict. Follow the instructions in 'Resource Conflicts' above to 'set configuration manually' under the 'resources' tab. If there is a 'use automatic configuration' button that must be unticked.
  2. Check if you have two copies of the driver installed (one will be 'not working', and should be removed).
  3. The driver has been loaded on a PC that is not a PC Card, or the version of !PC you have is before v2.00 so HPC is not supported. See 'Requirements'.
• * No Icon: The driver is working normally If the driver is working normally and there is no CDROM displayed then the most likely cause is that either there is no CDROM available to RISC OS (check your icon bar), or the number of CDROM drives is set to 0. Change this by clicking menu on the CDROM icon on the icon bar and following 'Configure -> Drives', to set the actual number of drives.

Safe List

1. Load into your RISC OS text editor, 'Edit' or similar, the file called Windows.Ios/ini which is in the Windows95 directory of your drive_c DOSDisc file (partition).
2. Add the following lines at the end of the [SafeList] section.
   • hpc_cd.sys ; Aleph One real-mode CD-ROM driver
   • hpcaspi.sys ; Andreas Walter's DOS ARMASPI driver
   • armedit.sys ; Alexander Thoukidides' ARMedit driver
   Please remember that if you are using Edit to copy the [0d] from the end of one one of the other lines and add them to the end of the new lines.
3. Save the file.

Autoexec and Config files

Please remember that if you are using Edit you will see a [0d] at the end of each of these lines.

You can delete the HPC_CD.SYS from the config/sys file and the MSCDEX /D:MSCD000 from the autoexec/bat if you wish, as these would be deleted by the installer if they were not REMed out anyway.

• config/sys file
  • REM DEVICE= [PATH] HPC_CD.SYS
  • REM DEVICE= [PATH] HPCASPI.SYS
  • REM DEVICE= [PATH] ARMEDIT.SYS
• autoexec.bat
  • REM [PATH] \MSCDEX /D:MSCD000

Device Conflicts

NOTE:- Because of the number of versions of Windows9x you may find that some of the buttons that are stated in the instructions below are not the same as you are presented with. Selecting a similar named button in such cases normally works.

1. Run the Control Panel, System.
2. Select the Device Manager tab.
3. At the SCSI controllers the if the symbol at the side of it is a '+' Select on it to change it to a '-' so that you can see the "Aleph One RISCOS-hosted devices controller" which will have a red cross or a yellow disc with a black '!'.
4. Select the "Aleph One RISCOS-hosted devices controller" and then the 'Properties'
5. Within the General window the "Original Configuration (Current)" may not ticked. If so select in the small square to make it so. (One version of Windows will only tell you that the driver is disabled so you will need to select it to enable the driver) If prompted DO NOT restart the computer, but select 'NO'
6. Go back to the Properties for the "Aleph One RISCOS-hosted devices controller" if you have to and select Resources.
7. Selected the 'Set Configuration Manually' button. All the information will be correct and no conflicts should be listed in the 'conflict device list' window.
8. Select OK and then 'YES' to resetting/starting windows.
9. You should now find that you have a CDROM icon within My Computer and the installation is complete.

8X+ Speed CDROM's without RISC OS 4

It is not possible for Aleph One software developers to create a Windows Driver that works with all the multitude of patches and diverse drivers for RiscOS CDROM software. The Windows driver has to use the common point and that is the CDFS. This will continue to be a problem until an upgrade for the CDFS is created and adopted by all RiscOS users.

We have found that with some High Speed CDROM drive units, that having the "Advanced" cache settings to "Auto" has cured users' problems.

CD Autochangers

AMD CPU PC cards.

An exception 0E has occurred at 0028:C13E6FB0 in VxD ---. This was called from 0028:C001F227 in VxD ---. It may be possible to continue normally.

Pressing a key to attempt to continue causes '95 to crash with a "snowstorm" screen, that needs !PC to be reset to clear.

Download the Microsoft AMD patch

Work Around for Audio CDs and Long Filename CDs.

This section is related to a work around for PCPro users running Windows95/8 and the new 32bitCDROM drive. This work around allows Audio and AutoRoute Express CD's to work correctly. It may also allow for other CD's like CD+ but this has not been tested.

The object of this work around is to have both the DOS and 32bit CDROM drivers loaded and working, but designated different drive letters. This will result in Windows thinking it has added to the number of CD drives it has. In fact it is accessing the same drive unit by different routes. If you have several CDROM drives you will have to take this into account when designating the letter for the first drive unit.

1. To make the instructions easier start by installing the 32bit CDROM driver as described above in the Protected Mode CDROM driver section, the Manual supplied with PCPro3 or the ReadMe file contained in the Protected Mode CD Driver archive available from this Web site.
2. After you are sure that the new CDROM driver is working correctly (i.e. you can view the full filenames on CD's containing long filenames), you should find that the CDROM has been automatically selected to be the first available drive letter.
3. You can change the drive letter for the new CDROM driver by going to the Control Panels and select 'System', then the 'Device Manager'. Open up the 'CDROM' devices by selecting the '+' then highlight the 'ALEPH1 HOSTED CDROM' and select Properties. This will open a new Window where you can Change the 'Start drive letter' to what ever letter you require, ( I have set mine to "J" for Joliet ).
4. Close down Windows95 and Quit !PC.
5. Look in drive_c partition and ensure you have files called Autoexec/bat and Config/sys. If not save two empty files using Edit called Autoexec/bat and Config/sys into the partition. Close partition.
6. If you have PCPro2 - put the PCPro floppy into the drives, select the floppy drive and run !PCinstall. Select 'Install drivers into DOS partition', & 'Install CDROM support software' and Install button. Drag in your working drive_c partition. Select 'Continue'. Change 'DOS' Directory entry to 'Windows.Command' and select 'Continue' button.

   If you have PCPro3 - put the DOS Bootable floppy (made with !MkBootDisc) into the floppy drive (and ensure the 'Allow PC Card to Boot from Floppy disc' option in !PCConfig - floppies is ticked). Now run !PC. It will boot from the floppy disc. Run 'SETUP' to install drivers, and say yes to 'Install CD-ROM Driver'.

7. When installation is complete, (quit !PC to get back to RISCOS if necessary) and load the Autoexec/bat file in drive_c into a text editor like !Zap or !Edit. Please remember that if you are using Edit that the [0d] on the end of the line must remain this is a command code and not text.
8. Add /L:K to the end of the MSCDEX or NWCDEX line as in the example below.

   C:\Windows\command\MSCDEX /D:MSCD000 /L:K
   C:\PCP3_DRV\CDROM\NWCDEX.EXE /D:MSCD000 /L:K
   

   This forces the DOS driver to a drive letter that you have designated. In the above case the DOS CDROM driver will appear at drive "K".

You must also designate the DOS driver's letters after the 32bit driver's letters or you will find that the auto booting CD's will not boot up.

ASPI and SCSI CDROM's

CDROM drive letter changes and Windows

Everything is installed correctly but still no CDROM.

From Frank,Kay,Daniel & Christopher
Yes I read their web site help however that didn't actually fix the problem unfortunately.

However Cumana did send me some new software for the cd which has made the cd drive available to the pc side provided I click on the cd icon on the desktop in the acorn side before going into the pc side and windows.

Why this is I don't know yet and await their reply.

From David Jackson DJackson@Claresmicro.com
I suspect that the 32 speed CD drive may be the problem. We've had problems with drives of over 24 speed, in that most of them need modified drivers before they will work. We found that Dysan and Samsung drives wouldn't work with the unmodified ATAPI drivers, although Acer drives will. I've not come across the Toshiba drive the customer has, so I don't know if a special driver is needed.

Talking to the customer, I notice that the driver in use is the CDFSSoftToshibaEESOX driver. I've suggested he try the ATAPI driver. He hasn't got back to me yet, so I don't know if that works.

I've also found that occasionally, it is necessary to put an extra link on the hard drive to get the fast CDROM drives to work. On Seagate drives, this is the 'Non ATA slave' link, but the customer has a Samsung Hard Drive and I don't know the link settings for that.

Another From: David Jackson DJackson@claresmicro.com
One other useful point that worth noting is that some drives, particularly Sony 8x drives are very fussy about where they are on the IDE cable. We had a customer who had fitted a new hard drive and it refused to work, if his CDROM drive has attached. Eventually, I found a reference on Deja-news, which suggested making sure that the IDE cable was plugged into the motherboard at the end, instead of the middle. I tried this and it worked, but I still don't know why.

The CDROM is shown but some titles fail to work.

From: Peter Inkpen peter@inkpen.demon.co.uk
Upon disabling the Norton utility Myst suddenly sprung into action!!!

I soon discovered that the game ran even on the fastest SA speed and that all the previous applications which had failed to install now worked without any problems - so long as Norton was disabled.

I assume that the Norton antivirus application is somehow upsetting the Win95 / Aleph One CD-ROM / CDFS communications thread. I am not sure at which point it will intercede but it is likely to be as near to the data extraction from the CD-ROM as possible.

 Last Updated: 2005.11.07

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