CD-ROM drive unsupported or remote on network

Last Updated: 8 July, 1997

Symptoms

No CD-ROM device detected.

Hardware

Machines with an unsupported CD-ROM drive, for example a really new or a very old one. Or you have a CD-ROM on the network, but not on the machine you wish to install OS/2 on.

Problem

No driver for CD-ROM device or no CD-ROM drive available in machine connected to the network.

Procedure

First make sure your CD-ROM drive is really unsupported. For instance, there are drivers for IDE CD-ROM drives and even for oddball drives like the Optics Storage Dolphin AT-800.

If all else fails, follow these steps to trick OS/2 into installing from the harddisk.

  1. Boot DOS in a configuration where you can access the CD-ROM drive. Let's assume G: is the drive letter of your (networked) CD-ROM. Change this in the following to reflect your situation.
  2. Locate a partition with ~45MB of free space. We'll assume this is drive letter D:. This should not be the partition to which you plan to install OS/2 Warp, unless there will be enough space left to complete the installation.
  3. From the root of drive D:
    4.     MD os2image
    XCOPY G:\os2image os2image /s
    COPY G:\os2se20.src D:\
  4. Insert Diskette 1.
  5. Edit A:\config.sys
  6. Modify the SET CDINST line to read
    7.     SET CDINST=D:\OS2IMAGE\DISK_1\SYSINST2.EXE
    If there is none (Warp 4?), don't change anything at all.
  7. Save the file. Insert Installation Diskette #0. Reboot.
  8. When the OS/2 install program boots, it looks on every drive letter it can detect for the file OS2SE20.SRC in the root directory. See if the install routine now detects the installation files in \OS2IMAGE (without having to have the CD in the CD-ROM). If not, you could try pressing F3 at the installation to get the Command Line prompt. Then, execute SYSINST2.EXE (located on A: or in one of the subdirectories in \OS2IMAGE).
  9. If the installation routine happily continues, go on and Warp your machine!

Notes

This was a Tip of the Month, July '95 of the Grassroots Gazette, by Kris Kwilas - IBM BESTeam kwilas@uiuc.edu. (Great tip, Kris!)

Adapted by:

Jacco de Leeuw