> On Aug 3, 2023, at 3:57 PM, 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 >
Yep. Same here. For some reason, I’m thinking that first CD drive came with a controller card because it was a SCSI drive. However, I already had a SCSI scanner with a better card and just used that card. But that was 30 years ago, I could be miss-remembering it as SCSI. Ah, SCSI terminators…. :-) Jerome
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