Got a old SCSI CD-ROM, can I boot from it?

[ahsia]

I have an old Plextor SCSI CD-ROM, I think it is 8x. I can see it in Windows, but I can't seem to be able to boot from it. I put in a bootable CD, but nothing happens. It is connected to an Adaptec AVA-2904 SCSI card. Can I boot from the CD-ROM?

 

[jpsj82]

what does your bios say?
is it set up to boot from a cd-rom or do you have it set to boot first from floppy and then your hard drive.

 

[ahsia]

In the BIOS, I have tried to boot from both CD-ROM, and EXT, and EXT is set to SCSI. Either options doesn't work. It just goes right through like the CD-ROM isn't even there. But I can see the CD-ROM in Windows.

 

[Trashman]

he was refering to your SCSI BIOS, ctrl+A, should get ya in scsi bios, there is an option to have the cd bootable.

 

[Fandango]

Are you sure that that scsi card can be booted from? Not all scsi cards can be booted from.

 

[Bovinicus]

Are you sure the CD you are using is capable of being booted from? You can't just put any CD in there and boot from it. I don't even think you can boot from Win95/98 CDs (Correct me if I am wrong).

 

[HaVoC]

Win95/98 CDs are NOT bootable. Win NT 4.0, 2000 and XP are.

Tell the your motherboard BIOS to boot from SCSI first. Then hit Ctrl-A and check to make sure your Adaptec BIOS is set to boot from the Plextor drive.

 

[PH0ENIX]

Well that was easy - the 2904 has no SCSI BIOS.
Even if your system BIOS is set to boot from SCSI, the SCSI card needs to hook the CDROM to a certain interrupt to enable the system to boot from it.

With decent SCSI support in your system BIOS, you can still boot from a HDD hooked to a SCSI controller with no BIOS, but not from a CD.

Confusing, but it's an explanation.

If you really need to boot from this CDROM, the only way is going to be to get another SCSI controller.
An IDE cdrom would be a cheaper option though 😉