External CD-ROM for Presario 425?

Hello,

I am a (soon to be) new owner of a Compaq Presario 425 all-in-one PC. I'm looking forward to playing all the old DOS games that I played when growing up!

The 425 does not have an exposed 5.25" bay for a CD-ROM, so if I'm going to play any of my CD-ROM based games I'll need something external. I'd appreciate any suggestions for how to do this, it seems ISA SCSI cards and drives are plentiful on ebay, but I'm not very familiar with SCSI technology in general. Also, the enclosures themselves seem very expensive! Does anyone have recomendations on good card/drive/enclosure combos?

I remember CD-ROM drives having an audio header that went to the sound card for games that had redbook CD audio. How would that work with an external drive? Am I just going to need two sets of speakers, one for the soundcard, and one for the CD player? Unrelated, I'm also thinking about a getting an MT-32 for midi sound, is that going to be a third set of speakers I'll need??? I guess if it's line out sound, I can feed it all into a mixer... but this is getting complex!

Is SCSI the only option? Is there such a thing as an external ATA drive? What about a parallel port based solution, would the speed of such a thing be atrocious? (I can't find any info on the speed of the 425's parallel port)

It looks like this is a good guide for setting up from the software side?

FWIW, internal drives do not have to be installed inside the case. Sometimes you just gotta' 'think outside the box', pun intended. I have used in the past and still use others today that reside outside the case itself. All you really need is a data cable and a power cord that run inside the case. It functions perfectly even though it may look a little unruly.

On another note, have you tried DOSBox? All your old DOS games will play as-good-as, if not better than, on your contemporary computer with DOSBox. And, it's not limited to old games, either. I use some really oooooold word processing software as well as credit card maintenance programs and some other DOS only stuff on my current machine via DOSBox. Why? Because I still like the software, don't really want to give it up, and it won't run natively any other way.

Thanks for the tips. Yes, I've used DOSBox a bit, it does work well. I'm really just going for the nostalgia of running my old games on real vintage hardware

What some may refer to as nostalgia others call frustration. I never enjoyed my old games as much on the hardware it was supposedly designed for as I do now on the super-high-powered overkill computers that I now run it on. Nothing I liked ran that well on those old dinosaurs. I always felt like the software manufacturers had duped us big-time back then. As it turned out, they were writing stuff then for machines that hadn't even been conceived of yet.

I have a parallel port drive (microsolutions backpack) and it is fairly slow, but workable.
The DOS driver takes a fair bit of real mode memory (31K)

BTW I think dosbox is very boring

smeezekitty said:

BTW I think dosbox is very boring

Click to expand...

How is an interface boring?

Care to elaborate?

Welcome to the forum EC.

According to the specs for your 425, you have 2 internal ISA slots available. One way to get a CD-ROM up and running would be to go with a SCSI controller card and an external SCSI CD-ROM (has its own power supply). As a mater of fact, that's exactly what I did on my Tandy 1000SX. Another option would be an external serial CD-ROM. That may prove a bit difficult to find as this time. However, I do have a 4x unit that plugs into the serial port and then loads via a small driver - very slow. I would recommend the SCSI setup and you should be able to find a SCSI controller and CD-ROM for less than $100.

P.S. Where are you located? Plz update your profile.

Stone said:

How is an interface boring?

Care to elaborate?

Click to expand...

This is getting off topic but, the old games are not all that good by today's standards (atleast graphically). But IMO it isn't all about the game.
The experience is a major part of it and the sights and sounds of vintage hardware is unmatchable.

smeezekitty said:

The experience is a major part of it and the sights and sounds of vintage hardware is unmatchable.

Click to expand...

That's my thoughts exactly. I was initially drawn to the Presario 425 because it's a really nice looking peice of hardware, different than the generic beige looking boxes I remember from my childhood. It feels like the premium computer that I never could have owned back then. But for $45, *including* shipping? Sold!

Thanks everyone, I think I found all the parts I need for an external CD drive on ebay, now that I know better what to look for.

Oh, and check out this video of the hardware...

The experience is a major part of it and the sights and sounds of vintage hardware is unmatchable.

Click to expand...

Not to mention all the stuff DOSBox can't do. Blood doesn't run right as it is too dependent on the workings of the Pentium-era chips not emulated in their entirety by DOSBox.

To make matters worse, if you like the demoscene all manner of problems start becuase they made use of things that relied strictly on how the hardware operated or else used undocumented features and bugs which are also not emulated properly. A little OT but this Sega Mega Drive demo has a nice message for people that use emulators.

Edit: Some stuff appeared since I started writing... Guess that'll teach me to go and cut my hair halfway through writing a post eh? -observes posts- Ugh, LGR.

What about one of those Parallel port CD-ROM drives? I have one of those on my P75 (IBM 8375) and it works a charm, just loads a driver and MSCDEX in the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT.

And on my old 386 I have (or rather, my uncle did over 15 years ago) indeed a normal old 2x speed CD-ROM for internal use on the outside. He just took out the shield plate from the 25-pin serial port of the case (as all the ports are on the controller cards, these were unused on the case) and from the CD-ROM ISA card there's a really long (about 20 inches) 34-pin cable going out to the CD-ROM drive and he split a cable off the PSU with a DIN plug halfway on to provide power to the drive... I could put a picture up if anyone wants?

Hope it helps,

Dennis