The following is the problem i have,I own a SB16MCD and a Panasonic cdrom made for Creative Labs the problem in this case is the drivers that came with the soundcard are not made for this cdrom as it's a 24x and the drivers (on the install disks) are for a slower cdrom... i've found the correct ones on Driver Guide but they want a fee to download these (even though I've never had to pay for any of the other drivers i've downloaded off of there.

where by i come to my second problem, i was given a bunch of expansion cards and found a i/o card for third party cdroms(the company that make this card is Sun, Moon, Stars) and I found and downloaded the drivers for this controller however when i open the driver the documentation said i need specific models of certain companies drives long of short i end up getting a Sony CDU33a-01 problem is that the seller didn't provided me the ribbon cable (this cdrom doesn't use standard 40 pin ribbon cable , question can a 34 pin floppy ribbon cable work with this drive or am i stuck trying to find a cable for a obsolete drive?
at any road any input as to how to work around these problems would be appreciated

the computer i'm using in conjuction with this hardware is a 386sx AMD with 8megs of ram, Goldstar i/o Controller, Trident 8900-d ,Sun Moon Star Cdrom controller, Soundblaster 16 mcd (ct1750)

Is the 24x a regular IDE drive? If the sound card has an IDE connector use that and then a generic IDE driver like oakcdrom.sys. Or, assuming your HD is also IDE, just slave the cdrom to it and don't use the sound card as the cdrom controller.

You know how to set up the config.sys and autoexec.bat for a cdrom, right?

Alright, wait a minute. The CDU33a-01 is a 2X and you say you're using a 24X. Which is it?

I used a number of those proprietary controllers / CD-ROM drives in the past and I did use a floppy ribbon cable for one of the 34 pin CD-ROM controller cards and it worked fine.

A note from DriverGuide about that controller / sound card combo:

"Thanks to Michael Smith, Creative Labs Technical Support, here are the correct set of drivers and installation notes for the SB16MCD model CT1750 and Sony CDU33A-01. Please note the all important fact the /B xxx switch must be 10h above the base address of the sound card. ex base address=220h, then use /B 230.
Self-extracts to C \INSTALL\SB16 and SB16SONY. Run the SETUPSB.exe for the SB16 card interface."

A graphic of your card:
http://www.thegreenhouse.us/th99/i/...

I do not know the pc you have, however the following may help.

The cd rom drive you have may be too fast for a 386SX. I understand around 16x is the maximum it can handle.

Slow speed cd drives can be found on many scrappers.

Normally a standard cd rom is connected via one of the ide ribbon cable connections *NOT* the floppy ribbon cable. Then install a standard driver as Dave states.

You may be complicating the issue in attempting to connect via a sound card and not having drivers - which MAY or MAY NOT work when located.

Good Luck - Keep us posted.

This entire post is confusing to me. I don't understand what kind of controller you are attempting to use, or what type of CDROM you have, but---

(it would be helpful if you were to post specific model numbers)

There were as many as (?) controllers for older CDROMs, and some of them used the same connectors as IDE, they were definately not interchangeable.

Since floppy cables normally have a twist in them somewhere, I'm not too darn sure that they will work. Are you SURE that you are referring to a floppy drive type connector?