ATAPI CD-ROMs on secondary controller

Last update: 7th February, 1996

Symptoms
ATAPI CD-ROM drive on secondary controller is not seen by the OS/2 Warp installation program.

Hardware
I believe this solution is not specific to this hardware, and may occur on any system with an ATAPI CD-ROM on a secondary controller.

Gateway/Micronics 486 VLB motherboard with Enhanced IDE (ATAPI) controller built onto the motherboard. (2) Western Digital Caviar hard drives on PRIMARY controller. (1) Generic ATAPI-compatible double-speed CD-ROM drive set up     as SLAVE on the SECONDARY controller.

Problem
OS/2 Warp's install program doesn't go out and try to find CD-ROMs on the secondary controller by default. When you add extra parameters to the IBM1S506.ADD driver, it will try to seek out drives out on the secondary controller, as well.

Procedure
First make sure you have the updated ATAPI CD-ROM drivers. The file to look for is ATAPI.ZIP. You might have problems otherwise, and it eliminates one more variable in the trouble-shooting process. Here's what's in the file:

Archive: ATAPI.ZIP Length   Date    Time   Name --          ---   28328  02-13-95  16:07  ibm1s506.add 20490 02-13-95  17:33  ibmidecd.flt 24344 02-13-95  15:54  os2cdrom.dmd 33578 02-13-95  15:23  os2dasd.dmd 6061 02-22-95  14:28  readme.txt --                  --- 112801                    5

You can get it via anon ftp at service.boulder.ibm.com /ps/products/os2/drivers/atapi/.

Second, you should check what's master and slave and on which controller. To repeat myself, I got Warp running with two hard drives on the primary controller, and a CD-ROM sitting alone as a slave on the secondary.

Finally, this is what you need to do if you really want Warp to wake up and see that drive: (this procedure, by the way, is stolen from IBM's problem list.) It is titled "Configuring the NEC 260 IDE CD-ROM under OS/2 Warp". (but obviously it worked for my generic drive as well). Go into the config.sys file and add parameters to the DEVICE=IBM1S506.ADD line:

BASEDEV=IBM1S506.ADD /A:1 /U:0 /ATAPI

The /A: refers to the controller number, 0 or 1. The /U: refers to the device number. (I know, it's a slave and shouldn't be zero, but since it's the only device out there, this is what IBM said and what works). The /ATAPI enables ATAPI protocol.