sundance-communications.com/forum Forums Computers & Programming Computers, Software, Accessories Installing 98 or 2000 on laptop wo/cdrom

I am trying to rebuilt an old latitude LM laptop. it doesn't have a built in cdrom. I do have both a parallel port cdrom and a pcmcia card driven cdrom. I am having a hard time getting the install to recognize either one. I have the drivers for the units, but it keeps defaulting to the oak drivers. I would rather put 2000 on it.

Problem is that you'll need to get the drivers loaded for either the parallel port or the PCMCIA device BEFORE you try to load the actual cd-rom drivers. This becomes a "chicken/egg" thing, as you need to have at least the core of an OS installed before you can get system support for either of the drivers.

I'm not sure, but W2K may give you an opportunity (even with the floppy install) to load some third-party drivers early in the installation. This may be a work-around for you.

With 98SE you could probably sys the hard drive, then edit a config.sys file to load your drivers, then carry out the actual system installation.

Any other ideas out there, guys?

Pull the hard drive and put it in a desktop(need an adaptor , you can usually pick up for a couple of bucks) load the operating system and copy any drivers you might need for the laptop on to the hard drive. I have done this in the past and it works ok.

Kerry

I am not sure if this relates or not. But the adapter for the hardrive, how does that work? I have an old laptop that has a lot of software on the drive. I cannot get the laptop to fire up. Ended up buying a new laptop, but how can I retrieve the old drive data? Can I attach the old drive the same way. I also noticed that the "connection" of the old laptop drive is different from the connections on my new. Are there different ends to the adapter?

This adapts a 2.5' hardrive to mount in a 3.5" slot and changes the notebook ide connector to a standerd ide connector. I don't know if you old laptops HD is standard or not but most of the time there is an adapter on the HD that adaptes the standard male pins to that hard drive connection in the notebook. here is an address for the adaptor.

https://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=HD-108&cat=HDD
Transfering software is almost immpossible and it is best to use your original install disks but data is easy to retrieve this way.

Kerry

look on ebay to see if you can locate a cd-rom drive for it.

I have tried this, and so far no luck. All I can find are external harddrives. I don't want to put too much money into it.
Thanks for all the input.

The floppy unit slides out of the bay, and a CD-ROM slides in, if I remember correctly.

Ebay Offerings!

There are a couple used ones with lower prices. I know you don't plan to do much with it, but you never know when having the CD drive would be handy.

I think I am going the adapter route. I found an ide adapter for about $8.00. We will see how that goes. :shrug:

Where did you find the adapter?