Right so i got a junk PC-98 with a PC-FXGA installed. It works fine bar from the fact the Creative 5x DVD-drive won't open. After a bit of disassembly I've found out that its the spindle that drives the cd in the centre has locked down, so the spindle stops the tray from ejecting. I presume this is down to hardware error, but is it possibly due to the fact that Windows is not installed on it? It only has DOS ver 6.2 and dos shell. Interestingly the only drives that appear in dos shell are the hard drive (A and the two floppy drives (B:&C. Is this due to drivers not installed or does DOS not recognise CD and or DVD drives? Is it possible that the motor is locked down because drivers are not installed? If anyone has got any idea on how to fix this that would be great. If the drive cannot be fixed how would I go about replacing it? Can I put any CD drive in or would I need one that has PC-9821 compatable drivers? Sorry for the amount of Qs!
Do you have any directories of any note in the root drive of A: ? type DIR and see what comes up. Also type TYPE CONFIG.SYS and see if you have a line that says something like DEVICE=xxxx.SYS /D:MSCD001 If not then there are no device drivers loaded for the drive. Type DIR MSCDEX.* /S /E and see if anything shows up. You will still need specific drivers but if you find a standard Fujitsu (a lot of drives are rebrands, the Creative 5x DVD drive is a Fujitsu rebrand) or Panasonic / Matsushita drive then you should be okay. It should be IDE so it should be fairly easy.
You will need a CD-ROM driver for DOS if you plan to use it within that OS. However, if the drive will not eject when pressing the front button then the mechanism is some how screwed. If the drive is IDE you should be able to replace it with any other kind of drive. EDIT: For a generic DOS CD-ROM driver, check out http://www.msttn.com/goodies/
Right, disassembled the CD drive and its fucked. Part of the plastic that lifts up the lens and spindel motor has broken in half. Not sure what caused it to break in half, looks like a fairly sturdy piece of plastic. Blue and red highlights are each of the broken pieces of plastic. So it looks like I'm gonna have to replace it. I have a spare 'Lite-on IT Corp Model LTN-486S' 20-48x speed IDE CD-ROM drive here, will that be ok to use? I put it in and connected it up but the PC-98 checks the memory and then goes to a blank screen. Drivers: There do seem to be some installed. I put the Creative DVD drive back in after disassembly and although it keeps opening up and closing on its own repetitively there is a CD icon in the list of drives in Dos Shell, which is strange because that wasn't there before I disassembled it. When starting up, before the DOS-Shell it does say CD-ROM Extension 101 or something similar too. (it scrolls by very fast) "Do you have any directories of any note in the root drive of A: ? type DIR and see what comes up." Only entries of note I can see are NECCDD.sys and NECCD.sys "Also type TYPE CONFIG.SYS and see if you have a line that says something like DEVICE=xxxx.SYS /D:MSCD001" I did that before and it said something along those lines with NECCD_101 or something similar. However when I type that in now it says something in japanese and "- config.sys" on the end. "Type DIR MSCDEX.* /S /E and see if anything shows up." says something else in Japanese but with - /e at the end. Is all very confusing. I've found the same Creative DVD drive on ebay but its very expensive for an old drive (£50 inc p&p). Will putting that in work or will I be able to put a cheaper CD or DVD drive in? The broken one is the same product number but no 'DXR' or whatever that is. Will putting Windows on it help (and is this possible with just floppy drives?) cheers
Sounds like you have a faulty drive, you can use other drives but you will need specific drivers for them, however it does sound like... 1 - You don't understand Japanese 2 - You don't understand MS-DOS (DOS/V) So it's probably going to be harder for you to install a drive on to the machine. Although the PC-98x1 is semi PC compatable it's not fully compatible so you can't just whack in any old drive and expect the PC drivers to work on it. It sounds like you have NEC CD ROM drivers installed in the machine, although the Creative 5X DVD drive is a Fujitsu drive. I have a feeling that you bought a machine where the owner formatted and reinstalled a basic setup on the machine.
If you can get a look at the connector please. It could be a proprietary kind that needs a card to run, or it could be a normal ide drive that needs a dos driver to initiate at boot. Think 3do blaster type of drive... card, load driver on boot.. generic cd-rom driver should do it. Connect a new drive and load up a windows 98 boot floppy (easy to dl) and see if it find the cd.
Wasn't there a special port of Dos and Windows for PC-98? I thought DOS/V was for IBM/PC machines only, that's what I use for my PC-FXGA DOS/V. PC-98 is a bit of a bugger that's what I stayed from it, that plus the fact I couldn't get one in the UK. It's maybe worth to talk to the guys at http://www.jcec.co.uk/ they may able to give you some help. Cheers
Found this on Google jp, it seems to be a toolbox with various tools to make your life easier on PC-98. There is a CDROM Driver for DOS, try it to see if it gives you more response. I've uploaded the files on my site, it's a nightmare to get it on the original site.
