I did have a Mitsumi single speed CD-ROM drive on my massive 20 Mhz 80286 back in 1993. It came with an own ISA interface card, so I think it probably used some proprietary protocol instead of ATAPI.
Funnily enough that thing did faithful service until 2007 when it still happily see-sawed inside a friend of mine's under-table 'server' for his small business. On Thu, 3 Aug 2023 at 21:58, Ralf Quint via Freedos-devel <freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote: > > On 8/3/2023 11:54 AM, Jerome Shidel via Freedos-devel wrote: > > > >> On Aug 3, 2023, at 12:37 PM, Bret Johnson via Freedos-devel > >> <freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote: > >> > >> > >>> Yeah, USB and CD/DVD makes only sense for a 386+ ... > >> USB, yes. CD/DVD, no. USB requires PCI which in turn requires 386+. > >> Actually, there were supposedly USB host controllers manufactured for the > >> ISA bus instead of PCI, but I've never actually seen one. But USB > >> protocols assume you're using a 32-bit (and in some cases 64-bit) CPU so > >> USB really only makes sense on 386+, though you could probably make things > >> work on a lesser CPU if you absolutely had to. > >> > >> But CD drivers existed back in the early days and they never required > >> anything special of the CPU. They would sometimes take advantage of > >> special features if they were available, but it wasn't required. AFAIK, > >> there are no DOS DVD drivers anyway since I don't think anything has ever > >> supported UDF. > > I don’t recall any sub-386 ever shipping with a CD-ROM drive. But, there > > may have been a couple very high end machines. > The main problem why I consider a CD/DVD drive is that on pre-386 > computers, you rarely have an IDE/ATAPI controller to connect a common > CD-ROM drive. Yeah, theoretically, you could use a SCSI one, but that's > a completely different kettle of fish... > > The first time I used CD-ROM drives was at least on a 486 machine. You > could try to use and ATAPI controller on an AT class computer (80286, or > lower), but then you are getting down into a deep dark rabbit hole where > you need to know what you're doing anyway, so trying to adapt FreeDOS > would be a manual option. > > Hence, from a general, default installation option POV, I stick with my > assessment that it makes only sense for a 386+ machine... > > > Ralf > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Freedos-devel mailing list > Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
