Optical drive

If you're planning on installing Windows 9x or have some old games on CD lying around, you of course need a CD-ROM drive. If you don't have anything on CD and don't plan on buying any, it doesn't really make sense unless you still have a CD-burner in your everyday computer, should you happen to download an ISO-file of an old game. At least, this was true until USBODE came along.

Many have over the years looked at the Gotek and wondered why nobody made something like it for CDs. Well, that is what USBODE is.

The USB Optical Drive Emulator is not, however, a device you install in your pc like the Gotek. Instead, it is a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W (preferably) that you connect via USB. Now, you may think as I did - "how do you make anything USB work in pure DOS?" But somehow it does...

I had some trouble getting it to work, as I couldn't find a guide for it - so I made my own guide, hoping it will help others.

For pure DOS, you do not need a DVD drive, DVDs usually use the UDF file system, which DOS (and Windows 95) cannot read. Windows 98 (and SE) have limited support for UDF.