Thinkpads Forum

Hi guys,

I have some legacy software that I need to run under MS-DOS. So I installed it and now I am trying to make CD-ROM work on my Lenovo T420. I have downloaded cdtpgdos.exe from official web site hoping that it contains DOS and Windows 3.1 drivers for CD-ROM drive that is supplied with T420. This program requires floppy drive which I do not have anymore so I am trying to workarround it using virtual machine:

1) I installed MS-DOS in the VirtualBox. Everything looks fine
2) I created virtual 1.44MB Floppy using Magic ISO tool
3) I mounted virtual floppy into VirtualBox machine ranning MS-DOS
4) FORMAT A: -> Floppy is formatted sucessfully and I can access it and run DIR command on it
5) Now, I run out of C: drive cdtpgdos.exe. This program goes through licence screens and finally makes image to floppy. No errors and cdtpgdos.exe reports success
6) I closed cdtpgdos.exe but when I tried to access floppy drive but I got following error:
So it seems that cdtpgdos.exe corrupted file system on drive A or it created some file system on drive A which DOS does not understands. I have not investigated further.

What would be your advice now?

BTW, I have learned, that cdtpgdos.exe contains IBMTPCD.SYS driver that is supposed to work with T420 CD-ROM. This is exactly what I need - probably. Would it be possible to share latest version of this driver or fix cdtpgdos.exe to make floppy image properly?

Thank you for your tips.

Welcome to the forum.
I would suggest you get a USB floppy drive.

Thank you for the tip.

Ok, I actually have USB floppy drive. But that presents another challange - how to make USB drive work under DOS. In this case I would need USB drivers for USB Floppy which means I would need to search for yet another set of drivers .

Well, it this would work, why not. I will try.

Why don't you first try the DOSBox emulator? I've found that the latest versions are compatible with almost anything (unless your software needs some very particular hardware access, and even then there may be workarounds).

You are right, virtualization is probably easier. I have some issues on VirtualBox, I may try DOSBox. I went this way as I saw that DOS drivers for CD-ROM were available for download and I have clean machine so at first it looked like simple option. Unfortunatelly it is not.

If Lenovo would share driver in ZIP life would be such easy even for DOS users. But why, right ?

Note that AFAIK there are no DOS drivers for SATA optical drives running in AHCI mode; you can only use the optical drive if it is in IDE compatibility mode (don't recall what it's called in the BIOS).

(If anyone knows of a driver that works in AHCI mode please let me know.)

Thank you for this tip!

This is actually solution. In T420, there is SATA Disk setting which, when set to "Compatibility" mode (default is AHCI as you mentioned) enables ATAPI and CD-ROM is accessible even with widely available OAKCDROM.SYS. I was able to find IBMTPCD.SYS driver on Symantic.com FTP server and both drivers, IBMTPCD.SYS and OAKCDROM.SYS work.

So, the trick was to disable AHCI in BIOS and CD-ROM drive is accessible from DOS.

Thank you.

For my case - I think that disabling AHCI in MS-DOS is acceptable.