DOS 6.22 on VirtualBox

[InterceptorX]

Can't seem to get DOS 6.22 to see the CD drive. Anyone get this to work?

Edited May 21, 2009 by jim2006193

[+Nik Louch Subscriber²]

Do you need to load up the drivers and mscdexe?

[Fred Derf Veteran]

Can't see, to get DOS 6.22 to see the CD drive. Anyone get this to work?

MS-DOS did not include native support for CD-ROM drives. You needed a config system driver and the MSCDEX.EXE command to mount the disk to a drive letter.

Any ATAPI config.sys driver should do the trick these days. Well, it should work for PATA CD drives. I have no idea how SATA CD drives would work under MS-DOS. The two were never intended to meet.

[Panacik]

To find the driver files that may work for your drive under DOS, go to www.bootdisk.com. They have loads of guides and boot disks etc. You can even extract the files you need from their boot disk if you wanted.

You will need MSCDEX.exe and i believe CD001.sys or something like that. Then edit your Autoexec.bat file and config.sys file to point to each. I believe it was MSCDEX.exe in the Autoexec.bat and CD001.sys in the Config.sys file.

[Rigby]

Here are the lines you need. Of course you'll need to edit them depending on the driver you are using and the path everything is located in on your system. Oakcdrom.sys should work with most drives though. The MSCD001 part is just to identify the device, you can make it any name you want but it must be the same in both files.

Autoexec.bat

C:\DOS\MSCDEX.EXE /D:MSCD001

Config.sys

DEVICE=C:\DOS\OAKCDROM.SYS /D:MSCD001

*Use DEVICEHIGH if using himem.sys to save some base memory.

[Panacik]

Here are the lines you need. Of course you'll need to edit them depending on the driver you are using and the path everything is located in on your system. Oakcdrom.sys should work with most drives though. The MSCD001 part is just to identify the device, you can make it any name you want but it must be the same in both files.

Autoexec.bat

C:\DOS\MSCDEX.EXE /D:MSCD001

Config.sys

DEVICE=C:\DOS\OAKCDROM.SYS /D:MSCD001

*Use DEVICEHIGH if using himem.sys to save some base memory.

A little late there? :p

[Raa]

Late, but comprehensive and correct.

Ahh, my DOS days. I can still remember trying to get that extra 5kb of ram to run that stubborn game... :D

[Skyfrog]

Yeah, I miss stuff like that. Still remember figuring out how to override the ancient drive controller in my old Zenith 286 using PC-DOS 7's driveparm command so it could use a 3.5" floppy drive. All so I could play Jeopardy. Those were fun times. :)