Windows 3.11 Laptop- Dos On Boot Only

[rgsmile]

My son was given an old laptop by a neighbor, It has no cd-rom, so he picked one

 

up. But, the laptop only boots to dos, there is no operating system on it. It used to

 

have win 3.11, but it will not recognize the external cd-rom. He tried using a

 

startup floppy and it says it has loaded all on floppy. But, he gets a "fatal error"

 

message when he clicks on any temp files that were loaded by the floppy startup

 

disk.

 

Is there anything he can do, besides throwing it in the waste basket?

[bluescout]

Is he trying to access the Win 3.1 operating system or load another one ?

[cheap_repair]

I have a toshiba satellite 110cs laptop that was given to me, only a floppy drive, with ms dos 6.0 and no operating system, I picked up a nec multispin external cd rom, to try to install an operating system., windows 98se, can't get the power to come on again on the cd rom when the cable is hooked into the back of the laptop and the back of the external cd rom, but when I dissconnect the cable from the back of the cd rom the power comes on (not sure of the cable name) not the power cord though. This is my current problem, also the bios only shows Hard drive and floppy drive, no choice to add cd rom. maybe it's to old to add an external cd rom. please help if you can. Thank You (Joe) I'm rgsmiles son.

Edited December 21, 2004 by cheap_repair

[bluescout]

It depends on the way your connecting the external CDROM , if it's usb , then you need to load the usb drivers onto a bootdisk. Or if it uses the printers parallel port then you can probably get them from the device manufacturers site.

 

There are some usb bootdisks here....

 

 

 

http://www.bootdisk.com/usb.htm

[cheap_repair]

I'm not using usb, I'm connected to the printer port, with a cable that one used on an old printer, but this is the cable that came with the external cd rom and it hooks up just fine to both the cd rom and the laptop. Help me with the name I don't know if this a scsi cable.

Edited December 21, 2004 by cheap_repair

[bluescout]

It usually uses a parallel port , what is the exact name and model of the external CDROM ?

 

Google the name and try and to find the dos drivers you need for it to work.

[cheap_repair]

It's a nec multispin 3xp plus CDR-401 (yes it's old) but it's also an old laptop.I'll check google, I did however try driverguide.com and found a driver called parscsi1.exe but that didn't help. or I didn't execute it the right way. I went back to driversguide.com and found them same driver parscsi1.exe, I opened it up in dos and it loaded parscsi1 to my c drive.

Edited December 21, 2004 by cheap_repair

[cheap_repair]

I located the parscsi1.exe on the c drive in ms-dos but I don't know how to open the file to view the contents. or to execute it. It's 558,782 bytes

Edited December 21, 2004 by cheap_repair

[tw2]

what size hard drive is in this .

and for the cd-rom to work you

will need to turn on biderectional

on the printer port in the bios .

[mouse]

You might have to make a change to the bios for the printer port to ECP mode it might allow you then to connect the cd rom and have it work.

[cheap_repair]

I changed the bios Lp1 port to bi-direct it was on ECP, I'll see if this helps. I ran an install.exe and I got an error adapter fauly or not installed, operation terminated.

Edited December 21, 2004 by cheap_repair

[cheap_repair]

I was reading the book for the external cd rom and it says, I might have to change my autoexec.bat file, it currenty reads,

 

C:\dos\smartdriv.exe

@echo off

Prompt $p$g

path c:\dos

set temp=c:\dos

 

The book say it should read,

 

C:\SCSI\Mscdex /D:NECCD /M:10

 

And the config.sys file reads

 

Device=C:\dos\server.exe

Device=C:\dos\Himem.sys

Dos=high

Files=30

 

The Book says I need to add lastdrive=D to config.sys file

Edited December 21, 2004 by cheap_repair

[tw2]

ok this might help you

we just run this through awile ago .

please read herethis is what your trying to do .and this might answer some of your questions

[cheap_repair]

The autoexec.bat file reads, C:\dos\smartdriv.exe

 

can I change this to to read, C:\SCSI\Mscdex /D:NECCD /M:10,

or can I just re-type this in a line below the C:\dos\smartdriv.exe

 

I have never changed the autoexec.bat file before

Edited December 21, 2004 by cheap_repair

[bluescout]

Change the autoexec.bat to read what the manual says , and add the line that the book also mentions to the config.sys files last line.

[Bruce]

Just for future reference guys, if you have a machine with DOS on it, you have a machine with an operating system on it.

 

DOS is an operating system.

[rja]

As Bruce said, DOS= Disk Operating System. Not to be confused with Xps CMD (command prompt). Win98 can be loaded from DOS 5.0.

Edited December 21, 2004 by rja

[cheap_repair]

Well, I'm back to square 1,

 

I still can't get the external cd rom driver adapters to install, and the power won't come on the external cd rom with the scsi cable is plugged into the back of it, But when I dissconnect the scsi cable from the back of the externel cd rom the power light comes on, I don't know if this is because there's no adapters installed. Also the Nec multispin 3xp plus book says that I should not connect the external cd rom to the printer port, but there's no other place to plug it into the back of the toshiba laptop. I had the external cd rom hooked up yesterday and the power light was on. The cd rom works when not hooked up, I have played music cd's on it.

 

I don't know what else to do.

And the bios still wont see the cd rom drive d: that I set up in config.sys as

LASTDRIVE=d

 

The bios only shows boot prriority FDD-HDD and I can only switch this boot order but I don't see a cd rom option.

Edited December 21, 2004 by cheap_repair

[cheap_repair]

Here's the latest,

I picked up an adapter that connects the SCSI cable to the mouse serial port on the back of the laptop, and the other end of the SCSI is connected to the back port of the external cd rom. I now have power to the the external cd rom. where's before the power didn't work on the cd rom when the laptop and the cd rom were connected together by the SCSI cable through the printer port, the external cd rom book says. Dont use the printer port. Anyway, I don't know what I should set the settings in BIOS for the serial port??? And when I try to load the adapter drivers for the scsi, External cd rom, I get a message that says,

 

Checking Presence of adapter,

Cd Connection: Error encountered while initialising adapter

Driver failed to install.

 

I have lastdrive D: setup in config.sys

And the serial port is on COM 1 (IRQ4/3F8H) with Options to use COM 2,3,4

 

I don't even know if I can use the serial port to connect the external cd rom to it. but that's what I'm using for now.

Thanks For all your help up to this point.

Edited December 22, 2004 by cheap_repair

[cheap_repair]

I fdisked and formated with the format c: /s using the windows 98se boot disk,

 

I installed a new driver called backpack and that part worked, I now get an error that says,

A backpack cd rom drive was not found, be sure the backpack cd rom is connected to a printer port and the power switch is in on position, and it is. cd rom is connected to the printer port.

 

I'm trying to load windows 98se from an external cd rom, but I can't get the laptop to see the external cd rom.

 

And the above steps causes a flash of windows 98 on my screen when I boot,

 

C: drive

Command.com

Config.sys

Autoexec.bat

Bpcdrom

 

Please Help

Edited December 23, 2004 by cheap_repair

[bluescout]

I hate to tell you , but if that external cdrom manual says that it cant' be connected to the printer port then I don't think your going to get it to work.

 

If you want to get a cdrom hooked up to that laptop , your going to have to get one that is compliant. ie: one that hooks up to the printer port.

 

 

Just an example

[cheap_repair]

Thanks for the help, I'll check on another external cd rom.

[HammerSlammer]

I feel your pain, Cheap Repair. I just went throught he same thing with a gimmee craptop. No optical drives, and no options to boot from anything other than floppy or harddrive. I ended up installing an old copy of win 95 from floppy, networking,copying the win98 install disk to a partition on the laptop, and installing from there. Fun, fun fun :santagrin: