FreeDOS and CDROM support

I install FreeDOS from a CDROM. This in itself is reason enough to run FreeDOS instead of MSDOS. I probably still do have a box of original MSDOS 6.22 install floppies, but it is increasingly hard to even find a 3.5 inch floppy drive that works, and even then I would have to shove 8 or 10 floppies in the drive to do the install.

Once FreeDOS 1.0 is installed, it sets up a driver in my autoexec.bat file to support my ATAPI CDROM (on the system I am running this is the secondary master device and the only device on the secondary IDE cable). The CDROM appears as device D: and all I have to do is insert a CDROM in the device, wait a bit, and files appear on D:.

In other words, it all just simply works.

Have any comments? Questions? Drop me a line!

Adventures in Computing / tom@mmto.org