Newsgroups: comp.publish.cdrom.hardware,comp.publish.cdrom.software Path: cdrom.com!barrnet.net!biosci!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!EU.net!sun4nl!relay.philips.nl!philce!gerlingj From: gerlingj@ims-tc.ce.philips.nl (Jan Derk Gerlings) Subject: Re: Problems with RamDrive and CDROM Message-ID: Sender: usenet@ce.philips.nl (USENET News System) Nntp-Posting-Host: dublin Organization: Philips Consumer Electronics, Eindhoven, The Netherlands References: <2o1aop$qfs@hermes.unt.edu> <2oa22c$jsj@newsflash.mitre.org> Date: Thu, 14 Apr 1994 09:37:50 GMT Lines: 51 Xref: cdrom.com comp.publish.cdrom.hardware:215 comp.publish.cdrom.software:381 talford@mitre.org (Terry Alford) writes: >In article <2o1aop$qfs@hermes.unt.edu> >fb78@sol.acs.unt.edu (Ganesh Gopalakrishnan) writes: >> Hi: I recently bought a system with 2 floppies, a single partition hard >> disk and a CD ROM. The system came with DOS 6 and Windows 3.11 >> preinstalled. The CD ROM works fine; however, I have a problem when I set >> up a RAMDRIVE. Once the RAMDRIVE is on (i.e. after the reboot), the CDROM >> fails to function. The message is that it cannot find a file for the CD >> ROM application. If I remove the RAMDRIVE, everything returns to normal. >> I presumed that the RAMDRIVE (drive D) and CDROM use the same drive >> letter. I tried LASTDRIVE=E, hoping that that would become the CDROM >> drive, but it does not work. Also, I checked to see whether I can force >> drive letter E for the RAMDRIVE rather than D, but that did not work >> either. In fact the DOS manual is not clear as to whether you can at all >> assign a letter of your choice to the RAMDRIVE. >> >Here are some thoughts--anyone please correct me if I am wrong: >Your primary hard drive (or the first partition on it) always becomes >C. Anys subsequent partitions on the primary hard drive get the next >letters. Almost right. The Primary partition on the first harddisk becomes C, the primary patition on the second harddisk becomes D ! The other partitions are given the next available driveletter. E.g. You have one harddisk & two logical drives on it then you get C for the primary partition and D for the secondary partition. If you add a second harddisk to you system you will see that it gets the letter D and you original D drive becomes E ! > No two drives, including CD-ROM and RAM, can have the same letter >designation. I believe DOS defaults to a LASTDRIVE=E, so if you have >two logical hard drives (C and D), then a RAMdrive (E), your CD-ROM >becomes Drive F--and you must include a LASTDRIVE statement that >specifies F or more (LASTDRIVE=[letter in range F-Z]. Each drive >desinator in the LASTDRIVE command causes DOS to consume 81 bytes of >conventional memory--regardless of whether the drive actually exists). >If you increase/decrease the number of hard drives, their partitions, >or the inclusion/exclusion of a RAM drive, the letter designating the >CD-ROM drive will change, but no drive can be acccessed if it has a >designator greatter than E, unless the LASTDRIVE command is used to >specify a letter greater than or equal to it. >---Terry--- To add to the above : Both the ramdriver software as MSCDEX.EXE can be given options which set their drive letters. For instance MSCDEX.EXE /L:H will allocate drive letter H for the CDROM drive (be sure to set LASTDRIVE !!). Jan Derk