• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here
  • From now on we will require that a prefix is set for any items in the sales area. We have created regions and locations for this. We also require that you select a delivery option before posting your listing. This will hopefully help us streamline the things that get listed for sales here and help local people better advertise their items, especially for local only sales. New sales rules are also coming, so stay tuned.

Vintage 1995 Pionex 486 DX2 66 Mhz Computer

Absolutely. You'll need either a dos boot disk with cdrom support of cdrom drivers loaded from machines hard drive to start the installation process or be able to copy the installation folder to the hard drive.
 
Ok I put the floppy drive boot disk in and it pulled up a Windows 95 menu, but the installation was aborted since it couldn't find the MSCD001 driver. No valid CD-ROM driver found. If it's relevant the CD-ROM installed is 1 Sony model CDU31A-02.
 

Attachments

  • Drivers (1).jpg
    Drivers (1).jpg
    95.2 KB · Views: 1
It's attached to the sound card. BIOS only has options to boot from hard drive or floppy. The Windows 95 floppy boot disk I tried says CD-ROM setup on it.

Additionally, how do I install a boot disk from that site to one of the hard drives when I'm unable to get the computer to boot? I think this boot disk should work, it picks up three different CD-ROM drivers, but none are Sony CD-ROMS.
 
Last edited:
Easy. On a machine that has a 3.5" fdd and internet access to create it the disk with. If the machine has no on board fdd I use a usb fdd. Most here would use what's called a "Tweener" system to carry out the task.

If if you had a nic in the system you can transfer the files over from a more modern system in plain Dos. Even that can be done just using a boot disk.

What is the sound card?

Easiest thing to do if you have a spare later IDE cdrom laying about is to use that and slave it to the c: drive.
 
Last edited:
It has a generic 50-0001AZ-25-2 sound card and a Cardinal 020-0490 network card. The Windows 95 boot disk I tried detects the following drivers : Toshiba IDE CDROM, Hitachi DVD CDROM, and SCSI CDROM. I'm not sure why there wouldn't be one for the Sony CDROM installed. I found a site that has a driver download available for the CDROM I have and compatible with Windows 95 (http://www.windowsdriverupdates.com/cdu31a-02/). I presume I could use the network card to install it on this system, I just haven't done it before.
 
You're right, it is a modem card. So I'd need a USB floppy drive so I could install the driver on it from my modern computer on a blank floppy, and afterwards put it in the floppy drive before powering on the Pionex to get the driver installed there.
 
Wouldn't trust that link you gave for getting the cdrom driver btw. You might have better luck here http://ibm-pc.org/drivers/cdrom/OTHER/other.html

Good work sticking with this system btw :)

Yes a usb floppy drive would work.. You might find an old P4 or earlier with a fdd in a skip though that will do the trick. Any old slimline will do.
 
Last edited:
The Sony CDU-31A is the 1X speed sibling of the Sony CDU-33A 2X speed. Both use the proprietary Sony (FDD cable like) CD-ROM interface.
 
Thanks for letting me know about that site. I checked it out but it doesn't have a page on Sony drivers. Still looking for one with drivers compatible with Windows 95.

Hoping once I get this sorted there aren't too many more issues to troubleshoot! Took quite a while before I finally found out it wouldn't display or beep simply because of the RTC module, so I've made some progress on it.
 
Last edited:
PeterLI said:
The Sony CDU-31A is the 1X speed sibling of the Sony CDU-33A 2X speed. Both use the proprietary Sony (FDD cable like) CD-ROM interface.
Click to expand...
The reason I suggested using a generic IDE drive as slave. It'll speed up the win95 installation process.

I gave up on proprietary interfaces on my old kit years ago. So it's not "period correct". Bah Hum Bug..
 
Last edited:
I don't have a spare CD-ROM at the moment, just a spare VESA video card I didn't end up needing. I'll be going to some yard sales tomorrow though so maybe I'll come across an old PC I could salvage one from. How would I know whether a CD-ROM is proprietary or not, and whether it is able to be slaved to the hard drive?
 
Any 8x through 24x cdrom - cdrom/rw IDE drive should work fine. Even Dvd drives. Bonus also is you could also make use of the newer systems hdd if you had to.

Careful though once you start collecting "stuff" it can accumulate very very quickly.
 
Last edited:
No luck with a spare CD-ROM so far. Found some old 3.5'' floppy disks with family photos saved on them in storage though so I could use a USB floppy drive to hopefully recover those as well. Additionally, I'm not sure how I could hook up a non-proprietary CD-ROM to the master drive on this machine as there are two hard drives installed and there isn't a third connector on that cable.
 
vintageestatefinds said:
No luck with a spare CD-ROM so far. Found some old 3.5'' floppy disks with family photos saved on them in storage though so I could use a USB floppy drive to hopefully recover those as well. Additionally, I'm not sure how I could hook up a non-proprietary CD-ROM to the master drive on this machine as there are two hard drives installed and there isn't a third connector on that cable.
Click to expand...

Well, that one's easy. You'd just remove the existing slave drive and hook the CD drive in its place. Unless there's some reason you really need that second drive in there while you're installing the OS.
 
vintageestatefinds said:
No luck with a spare CD-ROM so far. Found some old 3.5'' floppy disks with family photos saved on them in storage though so I could use a USB floppy drive to hopefully recover those as well. Additionally, I'm not sure how I could hook up a non-proprietary CD-ROM to the master drive on this machine as there are two hard drives installed and there isn't a third connector on that cable.
Click to expand...
DUH! There isn't a third connector on that cable because the IDE interface can only handle two drives at a time. :)

Try pulling one of the drives and replacing it with the CD-ROM.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top