CD-ROM drive unsupported or remote on network

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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.

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:

       MD os2image
       XCOPY G:\os2image os2image /s
       COPY G:\os2se20.src D:\
   

4. Insert (a backup of) Diskette 1.
5. Edit A:\config.sys
6. Modify the SET CDINST line to read

       SET CDINST=D:\OS2IMAGE\DISK_1\SYSINST2.EXE
   

7. Save the file. Insert Installation Diskette #0. Reboot 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.