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Creative CD-200 CD-ROM and Sound Blaster Compatibility

R

RetroJunkie

Experienced Member
Joined
Jul 14, 2012
Messages
53
Location
Sydney, Australia
Hi everyone, this one is doing my head in so thought I'd drop a post by to get some help.

I've been rebuilding one of the computers of my childhood an Osborne 486 DX2 66MHz and have hit a wall when getting the CD-ROM to work.
Now from what I have been able to gather the Creative CD-200 needs to interface with a Panasonic / Creative 40-pin connector on a sound card.
I've pulled the drive apart looking for any markings that could identify it as anything but a CD-200, I couldn't see anything there though.
These drives seem to be somewhat related to the CR-563 by Panasonic.

I've got a range of Sound Blaster cards to test with;
CT1600 - Sound Blaster Pro 2 (Just one unlabelled 40-pin connector onboard presumed to be Creative / Panasonic)
CT2230 - Sound Blaster 16 (Has all three types of connectors present; Creative / Panasonic, Mitsumi and Sony)
CT2770 - Sound Blaster 16 Value (Has Creative / Panasonic connector)
CT2810 - Sound Blaster VIBRA 16 (Has "IDE Interface" connector)
CT2900 - Sound Blaster VIBRA 16S (Has "IDE Interface" connector)

Does anyone have any ideas on what combinations I should try and more importantly, what software / drivers I should be using.
The goal is to get MS-DOS up and running with CD-ROM support, then I'll move on to other operating systems.
Any input is appreciated! :D
 
The first computer I ever used was an Osborne Turbomate IV. They were good machines.
I have a Sound Blaster 16 Value and they seem to be just fine when interfacing with Creative cd drives. Also if you need CD ROM support, you are going to have to use MSDOS 6.22. By far the easiest to configure a CD ROM for.
 
MS-DOS 6.22 is definitely the route I'll be going. Tired of DOS 3.3 on the old 8086 machines. Need something almost TWICE as revised!
I'll give the Value a shot shortly, I've been focusing on the CT1600 since it may have came with the drive (according to Wikipedia anyway).
I'm just running through a Windows 98 install to see what it recognises out of the box.
Don't worry though, I wouldn't leave 98 on a 66MHz 486, need some Windows 95 for that.

I've had no issues with my getting a bog standard 52x Sony drive going in DOS.
I found it in a P3-800MHz I found on the side of the road... so much computing power! Why throw it away? (Well it was a bit water damaged, but functional!)

Wow that Turbomate seems to be just as obscure, no doubt it was Made in Australia as well! Quality made like my PS/2 and this Osborne :D
 
RetroJunkie said:
MS-DOS 6.22 is definitely the route I'll be going. Tired of DOS 3.3 on the old 8086 machines. Need something almost TWICE as revised!
I'll give the Value a shot shortly, I've been focusing on the CT1600 since it may have came with the drive (according to Wikipedia anyway).
I'm just running through a Windows 98 install to see what it recognises out of the box.
Don't worry though, I wouldn't leave 98 on a 66MHz 486, need some Windows 95 for that.

I've had no issues with my getting a bog standard 52x Sony drive going in DOS.
I found it in a P3-800MHz I found on the side of the road... so much computing power! Why throw it away? (Well it was a bit water damaged, but functional!)

Wow that Turbomate seems to be just as obscure, no doubt it was Made in Australia as well! Quality made like my PS/2 and this Osborne :D
Click to expand...
I saw a seller on ebay sell some Osborne machines a while back. He had a Osborne Turbomate IV but it was upgraded to a 5x86 and it was pickup only from Melbourne which is a a very long way from where I live.
 
generic486 said:
I saw a seller on ebay sell some Osborne machines a while back. He had a Osborne Turbomate IV but it was upgraded to a 5x86 and it was pickup only from Melbourne which is a a very long way from where I live.
Click to expand...

Yep he's the one I picked up this Osborne off. Only references to the Turbomate I could find were in his feedback! He was kind enough to post my Osborne up to me.
Where does one find a steady supply of old machines like this though?
(12 minutes to go on the Windows 98 install...)

Edit: Windows protection error. You need to restart your computer.
Guess I'm back to DOS again...
 
I've bought loads of stuff from him. He has really good courier prices. I think he might be working in a electronics recycling plant. I think the Turbomate IV went for $20.50 if I recall. Shame about that but if i wait long enough another will appear.
 
Win 95 should be fine on a 486DX2/66, I used to have a IBM Aptiva 2144 that had a 486DX4/100 in it. It ran Win 95 and OS/2 Warp really well. But i would not run Win 95 on anything under a DX2. I tried Win 95 on both my 486 desktop and my 486 laptop, both were really slow. I read you have a PS/2, what model is it? I recently acquried a PS/2 Model 65sx (the tower model). I have a copy of OS/2 2.0 to put on it (which is a really underrated OS made by IBM themselves).
 
generic486 said:
Win 95 should be fine on a 486DX2/66, I used to have a IBM Aptiva 2144 that had a 486DX4/100 in it. It ran Win 95 and OS/2 Warp really well. But i would not run Win 95 on anything under a DX2. I tried Win 95 on both my 486 desktop and my 486 laptop, both were really slow. I read you have a PS/2, what model is it? I recently acquried a PS/2 Model 65sx (the tower model). I have a copy of OS/2 2.0 to put on it (which is a really underrated OS made by IBM themselves).
Click to expand...

Oh yes I have a Model 30 8086, it was manufactured in time for the initial release in April 1987. I should get OS/2 going on one of these too eventually one day. I remember tinkering with that as well back as a teenager - heaven knows which version it was.

The PS/2 Model 65sx, I saw one of those tower-like ones on eBay, looked pretty darn cool too. I don't really have the space at the moment through (or ever!).

I did put Windows 95 on my Amstrad Mega PC and it is so slow, bearable, but I think Windows 3.11 or OS/2 would be best suited to it. Or both!
 
I believe the CD-200 is a Panasonic/MKE drive. You will need to connect it to a card with a Creative/Panasonic connector. Load SBCD.SYS first (make sure to specify the correct port number) and then MSCDEX.EXE.
 
You wouldn't be able to run OS/2 2.0 because that would require an 386sx like my Model 65sx but you could run OS/2 1.1, I wouldn't run 1.0 because it has no GUI and GUI's are what OS/2 is all about. I only bought the 65sx a week ago and am yet to pick it up so you might of seen the auction I was bidding on. Model 30's are the smallest PS/2 I'd say so they are perfect for small locations. (Maybe the Model 25 Eduquest is smaller, IDK )
You got a nice little collection going there. Looks as if you are into IBM compatibles. I'm into mostly the IBM compatible computer side of things too but maybe one day I will get a C64 or a BBC Model B as I really like those machines.
 
Plasma said:
I believe the CD-200 is a Panasonic/MKE drive. You will need to connect it to a card with a Creative/Panasonic connector. Load SBCD.SYS first (make sure to specify the correct port number) and then MSCDEX.EXE.
Click to expand...

That's what I've been trying with no success so far. I've found a few other MKE drivers and will give them a go. Fingers crossed!

generic486 said:
You wouldn't be able to run OS/2 2.0 because that would require an 386sx like my Model 65sx but you could run OS/2 1.1, I wouldn't run 1.0 because it has no GUI and GUI's are what OS/2 is all about. I only bought the 65sx a week ago and am yet to pick it up so you might of seen the auction I was bidding on. Model 30's are the smallest PS/2 I'd say so they are perfect for small locations. (Maybe the Model 25 Eduquest is smaller, IDK )
You got a nice little collection going there. Looks as if you are into IBM compatibles. I'm into mostly the IBM compatible computer side of things too but maybe one day I will get a C64 or a BBC Model B as I really like those machines.
Click to expand...

Ahhh I wouldn't try to run OS/2 on the 8086! No way! Hahaha it would be for the 486 with the CD-200 of course :) Maybe a dual boot system. Actually maybe that would work on the Mega PC (486SLC) with Windows 3.1x and some variety of OS/2.

Either way I'm not able to play with any of my PCs until later this week. Looking forward to it though! Thanks for the replies everyone!
 
RetroJunkie said:
That's what I've been trying with no success so far. I've found a few other MKE drivers and will give them a go. Fingers crossed!



Ahhh I wouldn't try to run OS/2 on the 8086! No way! Hahaha it would be for the 486 with the CD-200 of course :) Maybe a dual boot system. Actually maybe that would work on the Mega PC (486SLC) with Windows 3.1x and some variety of OS/2.

Either way I'm not able to play with any of my PCs until later this week. Looking forward to it though! Thanks for the replies everyone!
Click to expand...
If you are installing on 486, then I'd go with 2.0 rather than Warp, as Warp is rather hard to find and is rather large. If you are installing ona DX/2 you can use Warp much faster. You would need a CD ROM drive as Warp 4 only comes on CDROM with Warp 3 having two different versions one with a red spine and one with a Blue Spine. Red Spine was for preexisting installs of DOS or Windows and just added to the system. The Blue spine was the complete package that allowed application support for Windows or DOS, if I remember. You would only need Red Spine if you are using Windows 3.1/ DOS, and blue spine is a lot rarer and therefore more expensive. But I would go with Warp 4. It is pretty hard to track down but is it an excellent OS to use and is perfectly suited to your machine.
 
There's also v3 red and blue spine Connect. In reality there's 6 versions of Warp v3 if you count v4 server and advanced server. These are just warp v3 with server bits n bobs added to the package.

They are out there if you look hard enough and do come up for auction from time to time.
 
Got it! Thanks to everyone for their help :)
Found out that I needed CCD.SYS or CRCCD.SYS and not SBCD.SYS or SBPCD.SYS by good old fashioned trial and error!
Now I can move on and proceed to either pick and choose one of the many flavours of OS/2 or be a complete sellout and go mainstream with Windows :)
I wonder which version of OS/2 I used... Actually looking at screenshots I might have used OS/2 2.0 but I am sure I played with Warp 3 as well.
That boot screen just looks far too familiar.

 
Glad to see you got it working. It was a long time since I had my Creative cd rom hooked up to 486 so I forgot the drivers names. I thought I had the original drivers on a floppy somewhere but I couldn't be sure.
Great to see another Osborne computer restored. The only Osborne thing I have is an Osborne branded Serial Mouse but no Turbomate.:(
Wow, you have a nice collection going on there. A lot of neat machines. Keep making videos.
When I bought my OS/2 2.0, I only paid $10 for it an it was NIB. You shouldn't have to pay anymore than $10 for a NIB copy and maybe $20 for Warp 3 NIB.
 
Ethernet card.

Ethernet card.

I see you are looking for a ethernet card recommendation for the Osborne DX/2. I would recommend the 3Com Etherlink III. Best card I ever used. Drivers are easily available. You would need an installiation of Win 3.1 or OS/2 for ease of installation because networking in DOS is quite hard.
 
Found one! I think I have two of the EtherLink cards, I remember seeing them at the local computer markets. Of course at the time I had no use for networking since my 28K modem hooked straight into the parallel port, or was it serial? I remember there being both or a splitter of some kind.
$10 sure seems cheap for NIB! I'll have to have a look!
My original goal was never to collect old PCs, just Sega consoles... but then there was the crossovers like the Sega TeraDrive (built by IBM) and the Mega PC by Amstrad.
Ordinarily, I could only see my collection snowballing from here... thankfully a lack of space is preventing me buying even more :)
Although I have bought a few things I probably shouldn't have like the Amstrad PPC640 and the PS/2 Model 30 8086 (I really needed an 80286 model) but it was so cheap I couldn't resist.
I need to go through my ISA cards next and work out why there is such a massive pile of them... So many sound cards!
 
Yeah, I started only collecting only 486's, then I branched to 8086/8s and Zilog Z-80's and I got a 80386. I also need a 286, I saw one (wyse branded) from the same guy you bought the Osborne from but the postage was about $40 and there wasn't much else I was interested in so I let it pass and someone bid on it. Since my last post an hour ago, I just aquired yet another machine, A Laser PC3 for the huge price of $1.47. Another z-80 computer to add to my collection.
I only have one ISA sound card, my Sound Blaster 16 Value. Very good cards. I don't know what the difference was between the the regular SB16 and the value model. Over the past few moths there seems to have been a huge jump in price of vintage machines, especially PC compatibles from 808x to 486. I got my 486 for $30 about 3 years ago and now they seem to be selling for almost $100 in some cases. However, the laptop x86 computers don't seem to be anywhere near as much as the desktop variants. Most likely due to the reduced expandibilty. Also Tandy machines are going dirt cheap. $10-20 for a complete system with monitor, system and joystick.
 
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Another nic that's worked with every OS I've thrown at are D-Link DE-220s.

If you go the the dos/win 3.x route RetroJunkie you could give Calmira ( http://www.calmira.de/ ) a try as well. It's a win3.x shell that gives win3.x a win9x look and feel. Some win3.x installation programs insist that Progman be the default shell though. I had it on a 486 running wfw3.11 in the early 2000s.

ISA cards are the only cards I ever go for on our local auction site. Mainly because we have some old test machines at work that may require them.

Looks like you're having fun.

A varient of MS Dos 7.1 ( the dos under win9x) without the gui fluff put together by what was called the Dos China Union back in the early 2000s. Installed off a bootable cdrom or a few 3.5" floppies. Good for bigger drives, no gui needed but frowned upon by the usual crowd of stalwarts. Most links to it are gone now but it's still out there if you look hard enough. Personally I don't see any big deal in using it if you have a legit copy win9x. I think they even developed a win3x file manager that could handle LFNs. Some other useful third party tools came with it that are now bundled with the freedos dristro.
 
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generic486 said:
Yeah, I started only collecting only 486's, then I branched to 8086/8s and Zilog Z-80's and I got a 80386. I also need a 286, I saw one (wyse branded) from the same guy you bought the Osborne from but the postage was about $40 and there wasn't much else I was interested in so I let it pass and someone bid on it. Since my last post an hour ago, I just aquired yet another machine, A Laser PC3 for the huge price of $1.47. Another z-80 computer to add to my collection.
I only have one ISA sound card, my Sound Blaster 16 Value. Very good cards. I don't know what the difference was between the the regular SB16 and the value model. Over the past few moths there seems to have been a huge jump in price of vintage machines, especially PC compatibles from 808x to 486. I got my 486 for $30 about 3 years ago and now they seem to be selling for almost $100 in some cases. However, the laptop x86 computers don't seem to be anywhere near as much as the desktop variants. Most likely due to the reduced expandibilty. Also Tandy machines are going dirt cheap. $10-20 for a complete system with monitor, system and joystick.
Click to expand...

Ohhh for that one I am guilty! I picked up the Wyse 286. It is huge. So huge I had to leave it at work. It is literally like a PC tower that fell over on its side. A nice big Seagate hard drive with a huge MFM card. Very strange design though with the CPU and RAM being on ISA cards instead of on the motherboard.

Caluser2000 said:
Another nic that's worked with every OS I've thrown at are D-Link DE-220s.

If you go the the dos/win 3.x route RetroJunkie you could give Calmira ( http://www.calmira.de/ ) a try as well. It's a win3.x shell that gives win3.x a win9x look and feel. Some win3.x installation programs insist that Progman be the default shell though. I had it on a 486 running wfw3.11 in the early 2000s.

ISA cards are the only cards I ever go for on our local auction site. Mainly because we have some old test machines at work that may require them.

Looks like you're having fun.

A varient of MS Dos 7.1 ( the dos under win9x) without the gui fluff put together by what was called the Dos China Union back in the early 2000s. Installed off a bootable cdrom or a few 3.5" floppies. Good for bigger drives, no gui needed but frowned upon by the usual crowd of stalwarts. Most links to it are gone now but it's still out there if you look hard enough. Personally I don't see any big deal in using it if you have a legit copy win9x. I think they even developed a win3x file manager that could handle LFNs. Some other useful third party tools came with it that are now bundled with the freedos dristro.
Click to expand...

Ah yes I have seen the MS-DOS 7.1, until the 300MB Connor drive fails I won't be needing that but I will definitely be looking into Calmira. I have a feeling I have used that in my teenage years when I was "stuck" on a Windows 3.1 machine after using Windows 95 for years. Geez, I remember when Windows 95 was installed onto the old Osborne. It definitely shipped with Windows 3.1 and we had some type of failure (possibly hard drive). Came back with Windows 95 loaded onto it. I wasn't very fond of it at first of course. No one likes change!
 
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