Previous page Contents Next page
PC Card devices

6.10 Network cards
If you have an Ethernet card in your Acorn computer then this can be presented to the PC software as an NE2000 PC Ethernet card, using the Network Links software supplied by Aleph One. This means that you can then run all common PC networking systems alongside your Acorn network (over the same cabling if desired). Novell Netware, Windows for Workgroups and Internet TCP/IP are all possible, as well as some others. 

Contact Aleph One to discuss your requirements.

6.11 CD-ROM
Any CD-ROM attached to the host computer can be used by the PC Card. All you need to do is install the supplied device driver (A1CD.SYS), and install the CD-ROM extensions. These are supplied with modern versions of DOS, and are also supplied with our software in case you have an old version of DOS.

It is also possible to fit an IDE CD-ROM drive to the expansion card’s IDE connector, but note that the drive will not be available to the host computer.

Installing CD-ROM extensions

To install CD-ROM extensions:
  1. First you need to transfer the device driver to your DOS partition. (see section Moving files between RISC OS and DOS on page 34.)
  2. Add the device driver to your CONFIG.SYS file.
  3. Add the CD-ROM extensions to DOS.
  4. Set the number of CDROM drives.
  5. Restart RISC OS and the PC Card to effect the changes made.

CD-ROM driver

Copy the A1CD.SYS file from the Drivers.CDROM directory on the release floppy to the root directory of your hard drive (It doesn’t have to go there, but these instructions assume that for simplicity). If your DOS is DRDOS (any version), or another DOS before version 6 then you will not have MSCDEX.EXE and must copy that from the release floppy too. Use the copy of MSCDEX.EXE supplied with your DOS in preference, where you have one. 
  • Novell DOS 7 is supplied with the alternative NWCDEX.EXE which will also work (it uses DPMI – see your manual).

Adding the device driver

To add the CD-ROM device driver:
 
  1. If you have PC Emulator/PC Soft CD-ROM support configured in CONFIG.SYS then you must remove that driver, as it is incompatible with the PC card.
  2. Add this line to your CONFIG.SYS file
      DEVICE=A1CD.SYS /D:name
    where name is the name of your CD-ROM device. It must be the same as that used in the MSCDEX line, but can be something different if you like.

    It is important to do this with a DOS editor, or understand the potential difficulties of not doing so  (see Editing DOS text and system files on page 34).

Note that the /D does not imply that the CDROM will appear as drive D:; it will take the next available drive letter, which is usually D: if you have one partition, or E: if you have two. 

Adding the CD-ROM extensions

Your DOS installation routine may well do this for you. If not here are the instructions for doing it yourself. 
 
  1. Add the line
      MSCDEX /D:MSCD000 
    to your AUTOEXEC.BAT file. Put this near the begining of the AUTOEXEC.BAT file, as the later commands may run something like DOSSHELL or WINdows, which would mean that this command would not be executed until you quit from them. 

    Be careful about linefeeds (see Editing DOS text and system files on page 34). 


    2.  
  2. You must alter the RISC OS configuration for CD-ROM drives to indicate that a CD-ROM drive is present. Note that the RISCOS CDFS does not require this, so you may not already have it correctly set, but !PC does require it and will not work without it, displaying the error message:
      3. No CD-ROM drives working 
       
  3. Recent versions of CDFS will let you configure the drive from the icon bar. Click Menu on the CD-ROM icon, then choose Configure, Drives, and enter the number of CD-ROM drives you have (usually one).

    4. If your software does not have this option you must do it from the Supervisor (*) prompt by entering: 

      Configure CDFSDiscs 1 
       
    (or more if you have several CD-ROM drives) and then press CTRL+BREAK to bring the new configuration into effect. Note that this syntax is for an Acorn SCSI card. The exact command may be different for your SCSI card, for example CDROMDrives, CDROMDiscs. You can use status at the command line to look through the settings to find the right name for your SCSI card. 
     
  4. Once everything is set up and RISC OS restarted, you can run !PC. You should see something like the following lines:
      5. A1CD.SYS: CD-ROM driver for PC Cards 
      V1.1 (C) Aleph One Ltd. 1994 
      1 drive(s) available
      MSCDEX Version 2.23 
      Copyright (C) Microsoft Corp. 1986-1993. All rights reserved. 
      Drive E: = Driver MSCD000 unit 0 
       
  • See Troubleshooting on page 67 if this doesn't happen.
Aleph One Ltd. 60-63
 
Previous page Contents Next page