trying to fix a Panasonic CF-35; need help!!

[rw96823]

I'm trying to install a new BIOS and O/S onto an old Panasonic CF-35 unit (I think it is a P-150), but I cannot do it with only the CD drive. I have a floppy drive, but don't have the hot link cable to link the floppy and cd together. I tried to use a bootable CD (Win 98se), but that didn't work.

I don't want to use the Panasonic reinstallation disk (don't have one to begin with) and want to clean install and find the drivers on my own.

I cannot get any version of Windows to load (don't want to use Linux) and I'm having a hard time with this. The unit is still good and usable but don't want to spend $$$ to get the hot swap cable.

I do have an old IBM travelstar 4GB hard drive formatted with Win 98, but it has the IBM drivers and I don't know if it will work with the Panasonic (haven't tried it).

Anyone out there with any suggestions.....if not, then I guess that laptop is trash. Wanted to use it for Net surfing and office work (docs/spreadsheets) so don't need speed, the P-150 is good enough for that.

Thanks in advance to anyone!!

[SkyDog]

The BIOS should be easy enough... With the laptop powered off, remove the CD-ROM drive and install the floppy drive into the empty bay. Boot to a floppy with your BIOS files and let 'er rip.

If there's a BIOS update that allows you to boot to CD, then you're really in luck. Put the CD-ROM drive back in, boot to the Windows 98 CD, and you're good to go. If not, you still have some options. If you have another laptop handy, you can temporarily install the hard drive you want to use into that other laptop in order to copy the Windows setup files onto it. Boot that system to a Windows 98 startup floppy, FDISK the hard drive if necessary, and then "FORMAT C: /S" to format the hard drive and make it bootable. Then copy the WIN98 directory from your Windows 98 CD onto the hard drive. Install the hard drive into the Panasonic, boot it up to the hard drive, and run SETUP.EXE from the command prompt to install Windows.

If you don't have a second laptop handy, you can get an adapter that will let you install a 2.5" inch laptop hard drive into a desktop computer. They're listed for just a few bucks on pricewatch.com (search for "2.5 hard drive adapter" without the quotes).

{EDIT} A few more thoughts... Those Panasonics are tough little computers -- built to take a real beating. And if you've got a good battery, the battery life on the CF-35 is around five hours, so it's a great little take-along to do word processing and whatnot while travelling. Your IBM TravelStar drive will probably work just fine, so long as it's the same physical size as the installed hard drive (thickness may vary).

[rw96823]

Thank you, Sky Dog!
To save myself the trouble, I installed the 4GB IBM and it worked fine. The original Panasonic drive (seagate brand) is only a 2.1 GB so I think my friend is making out on this deal.

The computer went on the blink when he tried to upgrade is O/S from Win95 to Win98 by himself. When he called me to help, we couldn't get the O/S installed properly because the drives (CD / floppy) are now hot-swappable and need that cable to link. I even tried to use a Win98 boot CD instead of floppy, but still couldn't get it to go.

With this other drive (drive is from a laptop I won on ebay and upgrade to a 20GB), at least there are no Panasonic system files and it resembles a clean install.

Aloha!