• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

External CD drive and sound

M

mattisengstedt

Member
Joined
Jul 10, 2024
Messages
46
Dunno if this is the right place in the forums.

I'm getting a 386 system without a cd drive, no sound card and no expansion slots.

I really want a CD drive and audio for some games. Can I solve both of these problems with an external CD drive with a parallel port connection?

Want to play the CD version of Monkey Island and similar with sound, would that work?
 
The backpack CD-Drives that support sound, from what I understand, only supported sound in Windows since the driver is a windows sound driver. So yes, but you will not be able to use it for games needing soundblaster compatibility. It will give you sound in windows and windows games.
 
CD audio for music in games will work if you connect the RCA jacks to speakers (or the headphone jack, if that's all you get). Sound as in "sound card" won't, as there is no hardware in a CD-ROM drive for that.
 
A small word of advice from experience. Before you put too much effort into getting an external CDROM, be aware that vintage systems tend to multiply, and there's a good chance you'll soon end up with a desktop anyway :D
 
Just remember that OPLxLPT devices won't work with protected mode games without the game being patched to look for the Adlib on port 378h instead of 388h. Also, said devices won't generally work for PCM SFX. While the OPL2/3 does have a single ADPCM channel, most games don't use it because it requires the host CPU to do all of the heavy lifting to play the sound sample. This is why arcade/console boards with FM chips generally had a dedicated CPU (usually a Z80) to run the sound driver on so the main CPU could be free to run game code.
 
FWIW, I found a ThinkPad 385CD is full SoundBlaster Pro compatible (I did SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T4, and it's been playing SB audio for me from DOS). It's a Pentium class though, not 386.

Related - i've having trouble confirming that the MicroSolutions Backpack was available in 1990 (and now with archive.org down I can't scan for old ads they might have in 1990/1991 articles of PC Magazine). The Backpack 4.0 driver I see is from 1994. Even Wikipedia is saying they had these Backpacks starting in 1990, but I'm a little suspect on the reference it is using on that. It'd be curious to know which ones were 1992 or earlier models.
 
voidstar78 said:
FWIW, I found a ThinkPad 385CD is full SoundBlaster Pro compatible (I did SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T4, and it's been playing SB audio for me from DOS). It's a Pentium class though, not 386.

Related - i've having trouble confirming that the MicroSolutions Backpack was available in 1990 (and now with archive.org down I can't scan for old ads they might have in 1990/1991 articles of PC Magazine). The Backpack 4.0 driver I see is from 1994. Even Wikipedia is saying they had these Backpacks starting in 1990, but I'm a little suspect on the reference it is using on that. It'd be curious to know which ones were 1992 or earlier models.
Click to expand...
I checked my early Tiger catalogs, but all the external drives are NEC.

Remember that MicroSolutions Backpack was a line of drives including floppy and tape, which existed prior to the CD drives. The first mention in InfoWorld seems to be June 1990, and there was an ad September 1990. I don't see any Backpack CD drives advertised prior to 1994 though.
 
Last edited:
Does the system possibly have a game/midi port you could connect an external device to?

Might be handy to know more about the machine in question.
 
hunterjwizzard said:
Does the system possibly have a game/midi port you could connect an external device to?

Might be handy to know more about the machine in question.
Click to expand...

Are you asking about the ThinkPad 386CD? (same as 380ED) The "CD" part means it has a 3.5/CD-ROM combo drive. On the back, it has a PS/2 port for mouse. They all have a parallel port, serial port, and VGA out (so you can add any LPT peripheral, while I think there are some suitable serial-port based joysticks?). They have 16MB RAM internally, then can add one RAM expansion on that. Another nice thing is the CMOS battery is very easy to get to - one panel on back, same compartment as the memory upgrade slot. The battery is right there, don't need to pop open the keyboard. (again, all the parts are interchangeable with the 380ED - at least the battery and memory)

On mine, after replacing the CMOS battery, I found that it still warned about "bad CMOS battery" once (or probably bad CMOS settings) - then after doing a SAVE in the system setup, it never complained about the battery again. Another thing, getting into the setup manually on the 385CD is "odd" - you power on the system, hold F1, power off the system, and keep holding F1 as you power it back on again (and try holding for a minute; I think you have extra memory, it is doing a memory test on that and so getting into the system setup might take longer than usual -- that's just my guess, since I noticed if I take out the added memory, I can get into the system setup more quickly)

EDIT: You *should* be able to add any LPT peripheral (like SDLPT). I'll verify that next weekend, I actually hadn't tried it yet. There was an old 286 that I couldn't get the SDLPT to work on, so it's true, don't take it for granted that it will always work on every system.
 
Last edited:
Plasma said:
Remember that MicroSolutions Backpack was a line of drives including floppy and tape, which existed prior to the CD drives. The first mention in InfoWorld seems to be June 1990, and there was an ad September 1990. I don't see any Backpack CD drives advertised prior to 1994 though.
Click to expand...

Thanks for checking. 1990 seemed pretty early (IMO). And looks like I mis-spoke: the 4.0 driver is from *2000*. The early 1.06 driver, the PRINT.ME file in there states "September 1994" So yea, I'm starting to think the CD-ROM versions were a 1994+ thing. But it's fair to say MicroSolutions was around and providing external storage options as early as 1990.
 
voidstar78 said:
Thanks for checking. 1990 seemed pretty early (IMO). And looks like I mis-spoke: the 4.0 driver is from *2000*. The early 1.06 driver, the PRINT.ME file in there states "September 1994" So yea, I'm starting to think the CD-ROM versions were a 1994+ thing. But it's fair to say MicroSolutions was around and providing external storage options as early as 1990.
Click to expand...
Hi All, I can confirm that there were MicroSolutions drives back in 1990 Not (CD-ROM's) as I did bought an MicroSolutions 5.25 Floppy Disk Drive late last Month off Ebay and in the print me file on one of the disks states Version 1.00 -- August 17, 1990 but on the same software disk the date for the 3 files on it is the 10 September 90 (1990)

Here the link from Ebay that you can see the photos if thats ok with the Mods

www.ebay.com.au

MicroSolutions Backpack Parallel Port 5.25” Floppy Drive UNTESTED | eBay

<p>Slight bend in the top front corner of the hood (see photos). Red light in front does not illuminate with powered on. Complete with original power cord and cables. FAST SHIPPING!</p>
www.ebay.com.au
 
LazyBones said:
Hi All, I can confirm that there were MicroSolutions drives back in 1990 Not (CD-ROM's) as I did bought an MicroSolutions 5.25 Floppy Disk Drive late last Month off Ebay and in the print me file on one of the disks states Version 1.00 -- August 17, 1990 but on the same software disk the date for the 3 files on it is the 10 September 90 (1990)

Here the link from Ebay that you can see the photos if thats ok with the Mods
Click to expand...

Nice, the label on the disk is also marked 1990. So, did they offer tape-drive solutions? I recall in early 1980s PC Magazine, there were DC300/DC600 (or similar) "large capacity" backup systems. Can't recall if they ran off of a parallel port. The DC6150 tapes from 3M (1990s stock) can be found and do still work (except the bands are 50/50). Actually that'd be something I'm interested in - a "tape drive" that is 2-track and can function on an x86. (because we're studying the DC300 tape format on the IBM5100 - and testing that on a 5150 or newer would save wear on the older equipment)
 
Micro-Solutions had several parallel port tape drives. There were a number of other vendors offering various tape solutions for parallel ports. I think I have a Colorado branded example. I don't know if any have the ability to handle DC300 style tape formats.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top