DOS Driver for SATA CD/DVD Drives

[Anarchi]

Anyone know of a DOS Driver for SATA optical drives?

The CD's boot up ok, but I need to access the entire contents on the CD. To do this, you need a DOS CD Driver, and MSCDEX.EXE to set a Drive Letter.

I tried gcdrom.sys from SourceForge.net: ODD DOS driver which is an new open source CD driver that apparently supports SATA drives, but it doesnt work.


The PC has an Intel Chipset (ICH8 I think) and is using the onboard SATA Controller, with a generic SATA ODD.

[Baud]

Google might be your best friend; do a search with keywords:
sata cd dos driver

[Anarchi]

I have, cant find anything

[rjs735]

I guess the question I have is what's on the boot cd?

I just got thru installing xp on a 915g chipset where both the HD and CD ( DVD burner) were SATA. Had no problem booting of the cd and installing XP off the cd.

Didn't need any dos drivers or MScdex beyond what already on the xp cd.

You might want to give some of the recovery cds like bartpe or UBCD or UBCD for WIN or 911cd etc.

You might also give this a try

Drivers for making a SATA boot disk

If else fails try a google of 'SATA boot floppy'

SO The question is what are you trying to do to what?

[Anarchi]

That dougstips.com link uses the GCDROM.SYS driver as well. Everywhere Ive looked, they all use this driver.

The disc itself was created in Nero using a "CD Boot" project. The boot portion of the CD uses a Floppy Disk Image which contains a CD Driver in CONFIG.SYS. The Data part of the CD (where you would normally drag files into Nero and burn them on a data disc) can only be accessed by using a CD Driver to assign a drive letter.

The boot portion of the CD sets itself as Drive A: or B: when the CD boots. You cannot access the non-bootable part of the CD via A: or B:

[PeterT]

hmm... I wonder if this is why the Ghost boot CD I made (in Nero) works fine in my P4P800D (PATA DVD) and not in my P5B-D (SATA DVD). On the SATA drive, it boots fine, but then just hangs before Ghost starts.

[shaihulud]

SATA cannot be in native and AHCI mode at all for DOS. It has to be in compatible mode. DOS is compatibility mode only. Note from this link I am providing: “Compatible mode. A controller that operates in compatible mode emulates a legacy IDE controller, which is a non-standard extension of the ISA-based IDE controller. In compatible mode, the controller requires two ISA-style dedicated IRQs (14 and 15) that cannot be shared with other devices. Because compatible mode requires dedicated resources, the ATA controller for the boot device (which is usually integrated in chipsets on the motherboard) is the only controller on a system that is likely to operate in compatible mode.”

This means for you to use your drives you will have to make changes between the loadings of operating systems. However, it [driver] may still not work due to open source’s faults or plain incompatibility due to core logics. Also, it can also be tricky due to some manufacturers having odd and ambiguous controller settings. Asus is a perfect example of doing the BIOS options for the controller incorrectly. The problem really, is that some do not understand the modes of the controller and also how SATA functions when changed to legacy or higher modes. Maybe the link will help some?

BIOS Settings for Native-Mode-Capable ATA Controllers

[rjs735]

According to what I read from the link that Saihulud provided ( educational for me) you are stuck with the set up you have.

Solution appears to be

1. MB MFG release a bios fix (haha)
2. Get a new MB (not real)
3. GEt IDE cd for the install and swap out after.
4. Install on another system and swap HDs.

Did I miss anything?

[shaihulud]

Yes, just change to what places you into compatibility mode in the BIOS. E.g., I would disabled native mode and AHCI within my BIOS to have DOS access, if possibly supported by driver. However, make the change back to be able to load Windows if it set previously to AHCI.

[Anarchi]

I dont see SATA Compatibility mode in the BIOS

Surely its possible to create a DOS driver to run in AHCI Mode or Native SATA mode. I mean it can be coded in the BIOS, why cant it be coded in a Driver on PC's without Compatibility mood?

Perhaps FreeDOS has a SATA extension? I had a quick look, all I could find was XCDROM which supports UDMA mode.


GCDROM doesnt appear to support AHCI mode:
SourceForge.net: Detail: 1905594 - AHCI problem

[shaihulud]

You most likely will not see the mode as compatibility because the syntax is enabled native mode, not compatibility mode. This is the same with AHCI and as to why I said that to be in a compatibility mode state, you have to disabled native mode and AHCI in the BIOS. When booting back into Windows and if AHCI was installed I will need to do the inverse and enable native and AHCI. If I do not then it will not be able to boot into Windows. I know DOS doesn’t support it because it does not support higher functioning hardware.

[Anarchi]

I understand what you are saying. The problem is that this PC has no SATA settings to toggle the mode. Its stuck on AHCI, requiring XP to use an F6 SATA driver during Setup.

I dont believe that an AHCI DOS CD driver cannot be made, anything is possible with considerable effort, even if it means we would need to scrap MSDOS in favor of FreeDOS

[shaihulud]

An earlier post I made mentioned how “Asus is a perfect example of doing the BIOS options for the controller incorrectly.” If you are using the P5B you change the SATA configuration to “compatible” and the Configure SATA as to IDE. However, it may already select IDE when set to compatible. When booting back into Windows you select enhanced and AHCI or RAID if that is what you had previously.

There most likely will never be a DOS driver because there is no reason first off and you need higher modes that DOS cannot support when it comes to processing for AHCI. Extensible firmware will pave a better way in the future by allowing users to use very operating system oriented tasks with no OS loading. This is something I cannot wait for.

[PeterT]

Originally Posted by shaihulud

An earlier post I made mentioned how “Asus is a perfect example of doing the BIOS options for the controller incorrectly.” If you are using the P5B you change the SATA configuration to “compatible” and the Configure SATA as to IDE. However, it may already select IDE when set to compatible. When booting back into Windows you select enhanced and AHCI or RAID if that is what you had previously.

There most likely will never be a DOS driver because there is no reason first off and you need higher modes that DOS cannot support when it comes to processing for AHCI. Extensible firmware will pave a better way in the future by allowing users to very operating system oriented tasks with no OS loading. This is something I cannot wait for.

Thanks for the info shaihulud. I think I'll try this on my P5B, for my Ghost disk.

[shaihulud]

It may still not work due to the fact that DOS may only see two drives per channel not three when in compatibility. Don’t know honestly, I have not used Ghost in such a long time due to various reasons. Write back and say if it did, curious I am.