Clean the heads off and lubricate the rails with white lithium grease in case the heads are stuck.

Thanks man - yeah that's next on my list. There's no exposed screws on the external floppy so I have to use a spudger etc to pop it apart by these tiny clips - might be a bit of a challenge.

I did find this example config sys setup too that uses drivers already on the Omnibook hard drive, but not sure if it'll only work with the official HP external CD-ROM...both drives are made by Panasonic but still probably a long shot:

devicehigh=aspi8xx.sys
devicehigh=symcd.sys /d:cdrom1

Thanks!

Do you have a null modem cable?
Good ol' direct cable connection could get the drivers across

It's a really smart idea and was definitely on my radar. Only issue is that all my other computers are laptops without serial ports...BUT...I could get a USB to serial converter for pretty cheap probably...definitely a good thought.

You could always take the hard drive out of the laptop if you have something which will accept 44-pin IDE.

Other options include a PCMCIA network card or PCMCIA flash drive but you'd want something where the drivers are included with Windows.

Thanks @BushLin - makes sense. I'd have to buy an IDE adapter but this did cross my radar. I used to have one of those Orinoco Gold PCMCIA network cards but kicking myself because seems like I must have lost it somewhere. I do have a PCMCIA to SD Card coming in the mail soon but to your point may be a driver situ...

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

I took the floppy drive apart, cleaned it out, rubbed it down with isopropyl alcohol, and then used the white lithium grease and it worked! At least long enough to get the stupid 25kB driver copied over to the hard drive! Now I have a fully functional CD-ROM attached and I can just move files back and forth with it.

Thanks to @bjwil1991 for the first comment that made me just go for it. And thanks for the other backup ideas...