Laptop without CDrom and new OS.

[GB_Cobber]

I was asked to fix a laptop with no CDrom. Its an old dewoo 486.
It has a PCMCIA slot and a parallel port.

Can i hook up an ide crom through either of these ports in order to install Win95?
If so what would i need?
If not,is there another way or how do i make a set of win95 floppy's from the CD.

Thanks.

[Mojo]

Yuk.

If you have an external Zip Drive handy, you could put the CAB's onto a zip disk and install from that. You'd need to boot with an FDD though, as I doubt the BIOS has 'boot to Zip'. Or an old Parallel CD Drive - hunt round the swap-meets.

I assume you don't have USB ports? Maybe you could track down a PCMCIA USB card, and do it from memory stick?

The IDE option is unlikely to work, as most 2.5" to 3.5" adapters go the wrong way. You wnat to plug a 3.5" drive into a 2.5" channel, but the converters that I've seen allow for 2.5" drives into a 3.5" channel....

Hang on, I've got it. Get a 2.5" to 3.5" IDE converter (I got mine for $10aus at a swapmeet). Pull the HDD out of the laptop, and hook it into your desktop. Copy the CAB's onto the laptop HDD, and then put it back into the laptop. I knew I'd done it before, just forgot how

Have fun - I've learnt from many late nights to be discerning about taking job's like that

[waffleman]

i didnt even know that they had laptops that old that still ran! Mojo got that right on. Working with material this old is really pointless since its gonna be completely useless in 6 monthes at most.

[ua549]

Boot DOS.
Put in a network pcmcia card and configure for NetBEUI.
Insatall the OS from the network or copy the CD and install locally.

Either way you may have trouble without some of the special drivers for the proprietary hardware/keyboard functions.

[GB_Cobber]

Thanks all.

A few options here. I'll see what hardware i can dig up and go from there.

Expect more questions later. Especially about setting up netBEUI if i find a network PCMCIA card

[coolqf]

An option that I once took:

Made 13-15 1.66MB disks (yoy can find a special formatting program to accomplish this through google.com). And I selectively transfered the Win95 files from the CD to the floppy. I'd like to provide more info but I did this too long ago.
It was relatively easy (just tedious).
The first floppy contained all the startup files. After the 1st/2nd floppy all the files pretty much went by cab number. Such as Win95_04.cab (or whatever it is the order that it goes in).