Kurzweil CD-ROM and Hard Drive Support

Modern Kurzweil's use the standard DOS disk format, but in the past (pre-version 2 or 3 Operating System), it wasn't quite that way. Those Kurzweil's wrote a proprietary format that was based on the DOS disk format - so close, in fact, that Windows often times doesn't agree with it. Upon sticking a Kurzweil CD-ROM into PC, you might see any of the following within Windows Explorer (or Translator, for that matter):

• Normal response - you see all the files and can navigate all the directories
• Blank response - no files are seen, but Windows Explorer shows the disk, like it's empty but formatted
• Not formatted - Windows complains that the disk is not formatted
• Crash -Windows locks up and can't recover except with a reboot

Specifically, the problem is in the Windows CDFS (CD-ROM File System) driver. Kurzweil's older proprietary format is so close to DOS that the CDFS actually gets confused by it - while the regular hard drive file system does not.

Since many CD-ROM's were produced then - and now - in order to retain compatibility with any Kurzweil OS, this quasi-DOS format is still being reproduced today. For instance, if a person creates some Kurzweil sounds and wants to put out a CD-ROM, likely they will take a pre-Version 2 Kurzweil and format a hard drive with that older format, write the files, and then produce the CD-ROM from that. In fact, the Power Tools CD-ROM directly from Kurzweil is very much that way; and, in fact, it usually crashes a Windows 98/ME machine.

It seems that Microsoft fixed the CDFS driver with NT/2000/XP, so at least the crashes are gone - but still you don't see anything on the drive. It comes up blank.

Since there's no way we know of "repairing" Windows to not crash upon detection of these disks (short of calling Bill Gates to fix his operating system), we have programmed Translator to deal with this issue, at least - and am supplying the user with tips on avoiding a possible crash.

If you would like to work with a Kurzweil disk, are using Windows 95/98/ME, and are having problems, read the following. All of this is intended to stop Windows from trying to access the drive.

• If you are working with a CD-ROM, make sure the Auto-Insert Notification is turned off for your CD-ROM drive. Auto-Insert Notification is the process where Windows detects a new CD-ROM has been inserted, and it runs the autorun.inf file (if it exists) in the root directory. Turning this off stops Windows from automatically reading the drive once it is inserted.
• Of course, on boot up Translator tries to read every drive letter on the system. To make Translator avoid reading the drive on the DOS level, go to the Options tab, and set the Kurzweil Drive Exception box to the drive letter you want to avoid. Translator will then avoid that Drive Letter when displaying DOS drives, but Translator will attempt to detect the drive when looking for Kurzweil devices. The Kurzweil drive will then show up in the SCSI-ATAPI Drives area instead, and not in the DOS area.
• Lastly, and it goes without saying - DON'T go into other programs on your computer and try to read the drive. Also, other program may try to read your drive without asking, so be careful. If you are working with a susceptible Kurzweil CD-ROM, ZipDisk, or other removable medium, we suggest removing as soon as you are finished working with it. In fact, maybe a good suggestion is to write all the .krz, .k25, and .k26 files to a normal DOS drive and "ace" the older format.