Greetings:
I just received this laptop for cheep. It has 40mb Ram(max) & 1.2gb hd. The
only problem getting linux on it is that it has no floppy. I tried to boot
using it's cdrom drive, but the prehistoric bios doesn't look for cdrom, only
fdd>hdd or hdd>fdd.
Hmm, PLIP installs assume a floppy. I recommend taking the drive out and
mounting it on another system temporarily, then putting it back in. Much
easier to mount old laptop drives (some are even "standard 3.5") or find an
adaptor for 2.5-3.5 than to buy a weird floppy bay. Note most "laptop
internal" drives really have a small pinout adaptor on their pins to match
the laptop's inner connector.
And don't lose any itty bitty screws...
Looking around for a floppy, I found resale sites wanting over $100 for a
silly floppy drive! That is more than I paid for the old laptop.
For investigating whether the floppy really is important to it, check if there
are any BIOS upgrades to bring it at least into the stone age. If so... then
dollars to doughnuts they need you to boot a proprietary floppy image.
Otherwise it's perfectly possible to live without one. Does it have a PCMCIA
bay? parallel-ethernet adaptors are really painfully slow.
On Ebay, I
found several, and they have a small cord with an odd connector. These are
going for $2 to $10 and I wonder if there is a way to learn which one would
fit this laptop. Toshiba doesn't make it available which fits what.
Not real surprising there. Mismatching a floppy bay can blow out the floppy
port entirely though. So *I* don't recommend it, but you could try... and
don't buy an overpriced proprietary floppy for it that doesn't come with the
connecting cord.
As you start to consider the required accessories balance how much those will
cost (in pain as well as $) versus seeking an offer on eBay for a machine
which may still be old but has more abilities.
Any help appreciated. Pls mail direct as I am not subscribed.
You've been cc'd. The archives carry these but there is always a delay in
them going up.
Thank you, tatah
'luck
* Heather Stern * star@ many places...