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I have an IBM 466 DX2 with the default CD-ROM drive installed like normal. I wanted to install Windows 95, so I first tried to install on top of the version of DOS already on the hard drive. It had the driver for the CD-ROM installed and booted into setup. Partway through setup, it detected a previous version of Windows on the hard drive, and said that I needed to get a Windows 95 upgrade. Of course, I wasn't going to find that, so I had DOS format the hard drive. I then tried to do a install with the boot floppy. When booted, it displays an Oak Technologies CD-ROM driver, but then says it doesn't find a CD-ROM drive and aborts. I need to find a driver that works with the Windows 95 boot disk so I can boot into setup.

Here is a photo of what the CD-ROM drive says on the top and also a photo of the sound card that the CD-ROM is hooked to:

Labels on an internal CD-ROM drive Expansion card with 40-pin ribbon cable attached

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    The standard Windows 95 boot floppy has a whole bunch of CD-ROM drivers on it, so if you happen to have Windows 95 installed anywhere you could try making an emergency boot floppy with it. Otherwise you need to find out what kind of CD-ROM drive you have. The OAKCROM.SYS driver only works with IDE drives. It doesn't work with SCSI CD-ROM drives or with proprietary interfaces like Mitsumi. You might also want to try replacing the CD-ROM drive with an IDE one. Any IDE CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive should work.
    – user722
    Jul 8, 2017 at 15:17
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    What kind of CD-ROM drive do you have? Is it IDE? As Ross Ridge says, the Oak CD-ROM driver included on the Windows 95 boot disk is a generic driver that works with any IDE CD-ROM drive. Perhaps yours is SCSI? Or maybe that really old proprietary style that plugs into the sound card? You say "default CD-ROM drive", but I'm assuming from the model that this is an IBM PS/ValuePoint, and I don't remember any of those coming with a CD-ROM. You might need to crack the case and see exactly how it connects.
    – Cody Gray - on strike
    Jul 8, 2017 at 16:02
  • Welcome to Retrocomputing. Please read the tour. If you haven't overwritten the data on the drive with more files you could try recovering the driver from it.
    – wizzwizz4 ♦
    Jul 8, 2017 at 16:02
  • Also, just for future reference, you can do an upgrade with a full-version Windows CD if you rename the "Windows" folder to something else before starting the install (like "Win_OLD"). But I personally am obsessive about doing clean installs anyway. It's good to start fresh, especially on older systems.
    – Cody Gray - on strike
    Jul 8, 2017 at 16:06
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    BTW it's too late now but iirc you just have to delete win.com to stop the installer complaining about a previous version of windows.
    – Peter Green
    Feb 5, 2018 at 3:03

1 Answer 1

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From your pictures you have a CD-ROM manufactured by Matsushita for IBM with a model number of CR-563BBZ. This drive uses Matsushita's proprietary interface, so won't work with the the OAKCDROM.SYS driver which only supports CD-ROM drives using the IDE interface. It is however not connected to your sound card, its connected to it's own LaserMate CD-ROM interface card (labelled LMEP0084C). Your sound card is just behind it, it's the card with the silk screened CT2770 at the top.

I'm not sure if your LaserMate interface card needs its own drivers, or if it's compatible with the Matsushita interface card and so can use the Matsushita drivers. If it is compatible then what you need to do is copy CDMKE.SYS to the root directory of your boot floppy. You'll then need to add the following line to your CONFIG.SYS file:

DEVICE=CDMKE.SYS /D:MSCD0001 /P:300

You'll also need to copy the file MSCDEX.EXE to your floppy and add the following command to your AUTOEXEC.BAT if it's not already there:

MSCDEX /D:MSCD0001

If the device driver CDMKE.SYS fails to load, displaying a message like Interface board or CD-ROM is not ready., then you can try each of the following numbers for the the /P: parameter: 310, 320, 340, 350, 360, 370, 380, 390, 3A0, 3B0, 3C0, 3D0, 3E0, or 3F0.

However if it doesn't work the first time, then I would suggest disconnecting the CD-ROM drive from the interface card and connecting it to your sound card instead. The model number on the card, CT-2770, indicates that it's a Sound Blaster 16 Value which should also have Matsushita proprietary CD-ROM interface. You'd then need to change the line added to CONFIG.SYS above to:

DEVICE=CDMKE.SYS /D:MSCD0001 /SBP:220

Other numbers you can try with the /SBP: option are 240, 260, and 280. However your Sound Blaster 16 is very likely using port 220 and you can verify this by checking to see if the jumpers labelled IOS0 and ISO1 at the bottom middle of the board are both installed. If they're not both installed then it's using port 240 if ISO0 is not jumpered but ISO1 is jumpered, port 260 if ISO0 is jumpered but ISO1 is not jumpered, or port 280 if neither ISO0 nor ISO1 are jumpered.

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  • Wait, so if I take out the lasermate interface card and try to install the driver with the cdrom hooked to the soundcard, that might work?
    – CASTA Piz
    Jul 9, 2017 at 14:19
  • I tried the drivers, and they didn't work with the current state of the computer.
    – CASTA Piz
    Jul 9, 2017 at 14:20
  • Actually, can you paste some links for drivers I could try for the lasermate cdrom interface.
    – CASTA Piz
    Jul 9, 2017 at 14:28
  • @CASTAPiz The CDMKE.SYS driver is the only one that I know of that might work with the Lasermate CD-ROM interface card. If it requires its own driver then there don't appear to be any copies of it available for download on the Internet. The CDMKE.SYS driver should print an error message and stop the boot process with the message (A)bort or (R)etry? if it doesn't find the interface card or Sound Blaster card at the port given. If you are seeing this error then try all of the other port numbers.
    – user722
    Jul 9, 2017 at 18:07

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