Panasonic Toughbook CF-27 MSDOS help please

[Another-Mike]

Good (morning, afternoon, evening)(pick one)

I have an unusual situation and need some help....

I have a Panasonic Toughbook CF-27 (mark 1 if it's important)
that I am using to program some old two-way radios...
It's running MS-DOS 6.22 with no add-ons or mods.

The CF-27 has a slot that supports either a floppy or a optical drive.
I have a DVDRW drive in the slot (a CF-VDM293 that consists of a
UJ-841 laptop drive and a CF-27 slot adapter. I have the specialty
cable that connects the floppy to the back of the laptop to allow
both to be used.

The problem is that I cannot locate the Panasonic-written driver that
allows the Panasonic UJ-841 optical drive to be accessed by MSCDEX
(the driver is called by CONFIG.SYS with a DEVICE= statement and
MSCDEX is run from AUTOEXEC.BAT).

If I use the W98 Emergency Boot Disk the optical drive works just fine...
but that's not MSDOS 6.22 (and there is no device driver call in the
CONFIG.SYS)

Why am I going to this effort?
I am taking care of many old 2-way radios that are still in service...
including Motorola Syntors, Maxtracs, Radius and GM300s.

The radio programming software for all of them require a hardware
serial port chip (COM1 and COM2) and they take advantage of the
MS-DOS quirks that allow the applications program to talking directly
to the serial port chip.

And some of the old radio programs have timing loops and they
need an old slow (200-300 MHz) computer to run correctly.

The CF-27 Toughbook handles both of those conditions and does
so VERY well. Plus it was free, and it's rugged enough to toss in
the 4x4 for trips to the 7 mountaintop tower sites that we are
responsible for... I have this CF-27 for MS-DOS and Win98, a
CF-30 for the 32-bit programs that can run under Win7 and a
CF-31 for the newest programs that require 64-bit Windows.

Thanks for any help in advance

AnotherMike

[jdc2000]

It might be helpful if you posted the name of the driver file from the DEVICE= line.

Also, what part of the radio maintenance are you needing the CD-ROM drive for? There may be an alternative.

[Another-Mike]

Thanks for the response.

It might be helpful if you posted the name of the driver file from the DEVICE= line.

I wish I knew. I'd go looking.
All I have is the CF-27 and is has a drive bay that can have either a
floppy or a optical drive slid into it.
The optical drive is either the UJ-841 or a CD-VDM293U, and it supposedly
came with a floppy disk with the driver file and a sample CONFIG.SYS and
AUTOEXEC.BAT on it.

I was hoping that someone knew the name of the Panasonc-written driver.
Then I could go looking with google or at one of the archive sites.

Also, what part of the radio maintenance are you needing the CD-ROM drive for? There may be an alternative.

A friend's two=way shop has a number of the Motorola radio programs on their distribution CDs.
The most important radio is the M10, M120, M130, GM300 series and i happen to have that
program on a floppy. Getting the CD-ROM drive running is so I can get the other programs
onto the CF-27.

Mike

[jdc2000]

If you are just wanting to transfer some files or programs to the CF-27, can you just boot using the Windows 98 boot disk and then use the CD-ROM drive to copy the files to a folder or folders on the hard drive?

Another alternative would be to transfer the files to a floppy disc or your floppy drive is working with the CF-27.