What is a driver?
A driver is the software that allows the operating system to know how to use your hardware. Without a driver, you cannot use your mouse, sound card or CD-ROM Drive in DOS.
When making a boot disk, one of the most difficult parts can be finding the appropriate drivers for your hardware. Overall, it is recommended to check with your hardware vendor on where to get DOS Drivers for your computer and also how to install them. Check your hardware documentation for more information on how to use DOS Drivers.
DOS Drivers can also be called Real Mode drivers or 16-bit drivers. There are also universal drivers that work with most hardware. Be aware that universal drivers generally take up more conventional memory which may be needed to make the game run. The three most common drivers needed are the mouse driver, the CD-ROM and the sound card driver.
The mouse driver.The mouse driver is probably the easiest to find and use. Mouse drivers are usually universal and will work from one brand of mouse to another. The file is usually called MOUSE.EXE or MOUSE.COM. You can try searching for these files with the Windows Find utility. If the file is not available on your computer, then you need to find one. You can often get one from the mouse manufacturer or from many download sites. This driver will have a reference line in the autoexec.bat that usually reads:
LH C:\drivers\mouse.com
The file name and the location of the driver may vary.
The CD-ROM driver.The CD-ROM driver consists of two parts. One is the manufacturer’s driver that you can get from the CD-ROM manufacturer. The second is the MS-DOS interpreter called MSCDEX.EXE. MSCDEX will detect the CD-ROM driver and assign it a drive letter. Windows 98 comes with a file called OAKCDROM.SYS, and it works with most CD-ROM drives. However, it also takes up quite a bit of conventional memory. At the end of both the CD-ROM driver lines, you will need to assign a name to the CD-ROM drive and the names must match. The names will come after the /D: command. The lines in the autoexec.bat and config.sys should look similar to this:
Config.sys:
DEVICEHIGH=C\WINDOWS\COMMAND\EBD\OAKCDROM.SYS /D:MSCD001
Autoexec.bat:
LH C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\MSCDEX.EXE /D:MSCD001
The sound card driver.Sound card drivers can be the most complicated drivers to find since there are so many makes and models of sound cards. Each sound card driver loads differently and had different requirements. Keep in mind that most PCI based sound cards require that EMM386.EXE is loaded to work correctly. EMM386.EXE may conflict with some games that use their own memory manager. If this is the case, the game will not run with sound.
Joysticks and other controllers that use the sound card’s game port will require that the sound card driver is loaded in DOS before they will work. Some joysticks will not work in DOS. Check the joystick’s documentation for DOS compatibility.
Any device that uses a USB connection will not work in DOS. This includes joysticks, mice and keyboards.