🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <93005.43985.J056600@LMSC5.IS.LMSC.LOCKHEED.COM>, J056600@LMSC5.IS.LMSC.LOCKHEED.COM writes:
> In <1993Jan5.161014.7033@bcrka451.bnr.ca>, Roy Shepard writes:
> 
> >I am  thinking  of adding a SONY CD-ROM  drive to my 486SX.  Are there
> >any gotchas with this, especially with regards to conflicts with sound
> >boards or COM ports?
> 
> I'd look out for IRQ conflicts more than anything.  Often, CD-ROMs are set up
> on IRQ2 (the cascading interrupt to IRQ10-15?).  I don't believe that they
> need specific COM ports like a modem.  There will be no conflict with sound
> boards as long as they don't share IRQs (sound boards most often use IRQ7,
> and sometimes IRQ5 as well).  COM ports take IRQ3 and IRQ4.  Unless you are
> familiar with what IRQs are, your best bet may be to just set it to IRQ2
> and forget about it.


In fact most (read: I have yet to find an exception) CD-ROM drivers
DO NOT use the IRQ and DMA capabilities of CDROM adapters.  The data
rate from the drive is too low. Everybody does polled I/O and saves
a month in debugging.

What does this mean for the regular CD-ROM user?  Read the fine print.
If the driver manual seez that it doesn't use DMA or IRQ's, don't
worry about conflicts.

As far as user friendliness goes:  DO NOT buy a drive that uses
those CD cases (i.e. the things you need to stick the disk in to
get the disk into the drive).  It's such a waste of time and
money.  I made the mistake.

Aki.
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