Very Computer

[Peronal replies appreciated.  I will summarize to the group.]

I have a ProStar 9400 computer.  It has a builtin doublespeed CD-ROM
drive.  What I know about it is:

  - The DOS driver says that is is an "LMS/Philips" driver.
  - Somebody at ProStar tech support claimed that the CDROM chip
    driver was the "ESS688."
  - This is in fact the sound chip, as smebody from here mentioned
    when I posted once before.
  - Regardless of that, unless the driver chip is builtin to the
    CDROM itself, that's the only chip that *appears* to be tightly
    coupled to the CD player when I look inside, so I think that this
    information might, in fact, be correct.
  - I've requested detailed info on the CD-ROM driver from ProStar,
    but they have not sent it.  (They haven't exactly refused; I thought
    they'd agreed twice, but I failed to really nail them down, and it's
    never showed up.)
  - I've tried telling the kernel at startup to try the CDROM as an
    IDE drive at all possible locations; I've tried multiple Philips
    drivers I've gotten off the net; and for good measure I tried
    every single CDROM drive on the Slackware distribution (from last
    December, I admit).
  - I'm getting really tired of accessing the CDROM by rebooting
    under DOS and copying to the harddrive.

Does anybody have any information or pointers on this drive and how I
might access it?

I asked this on the development.system group, so please look there
for details, but:
  - is it possible somehow to make use of the DOS driver under Linux?
  [Please no flames on why this is a stupid idea, or at least not
   until you read my article in comp.os.linux.development.system
   called "Working from or using DOS drivers under Linux".]

--
                                           ----------------------------
  Brian, the Man from Babble-on.           \  Brian T. Schellenberger /

  "Every jumbled pile of person  has a       \     R2266   x7783    /
   thinking part that wonders what the part   ----------------------
   that isn't thinking isn't thinking of."  -- THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS

|[Peronal replies appreciated.  I will summarize to the group.]
|
|I have a ProStar 9400 computer.  It has a builtin doublespeed CD-ROM
|drive.  What I know about it is:
|
|  - The DOS driver says that is is an "LMS/Philips" driver.
|    under DOS and copying to the harddrive.
|  [various true stuff deleted.]

Nope, sorry, I lied.  I was confusing the drivers I *did* find with
the ones I seem to need.  Here is all the info from starting up the
drive (hand-copied & typed; subject therefore to errors).

First, the driver itself:

    Philips Laser Optics Development CD-ROM device driver, ver. 1.06d2
    Copyright Oak Technology Inc. 1993
    (c) Copyright Philips Laser Optics, 1993, 1994
    Device Name: MSCD001
    Number of drives: 1

And then, later in the bootup process:

    MSCDEX Version 2.23
    Copyright (c) Microsoft Corp. 1986-1993.  All rights reserved.
    Drive D := Driver MSCD001 unit 0

As for the hardware, I can't really figure out just what the hardware
is that goes with the drive, but on the drive itself I find the
following label:

    CDR-9502

And the biggest chips on the drive itself (probably just logic gates
or something) are labeled as being

    42002  and  49040   (as best I can make out)

In the system itself, listed in roughly decreasing order of physical
vicinity to the drive itself, we find:

    ESS AudioDrive 688F
    WindBond W83787F
    DB86072
    P5CC2

Please note that some of these have very small writing, and some of
them I was reading at an odd angle because they were partially covered
by the case and are no removable.  Furthermore, some chips, including
quite possibly the one of immediate interest, are completely
inaccessible unless I really take the system unit apart, which I am
not (yet) prepared to do.

With this updated information, my question remains:

|Does anybody have any information or pointers on this drive and how I
|might access it?

--
                                           ----------------------------
  Brian, the Man from Babble-on.           \  Brian T. Schellenberger /

  "Every jumbled pile of person  has a       \     R2266   x7783    /
   thinking part that wonders what the part   ----------------------
   that isn't thinking isn't thinking of."  -- THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS