Does its behaviour change if you try to boot without cf adapter plugged in? what about booting with neither floppy nor adapter?

Hi chiveicrook, thanks for your reply! It does the same in all configurations: floppy drive without the adapter, adapter without the floppy drive and with nothing installed at all.

I have a 110CS which is a Pentium 100Mhz, your 220CS should be a Pentium 133Mhz iirc. I have the service manual for 110CS/CT from minuszero which would be similar to the 220CS/CT in diagnosis.
Check this section 2: troubleshooting: http://minuszerodegrees.net/manuals/Toshiba/S … ce%20Manual.pdf
Now if you have a T200 series that would be a 486.....

Hi Horun, Thanks for your help! I actually made some progress with the service manual, but not in the way you might expect. I held down the space key on power up like the service manual instructed for troubleshooting and after a while of doing it's checks, it booted right into my MS-DOS 5 setup floppy that I apparently left in there. So what I know is, that the hardware inside the laptop itself is probably fine and that my spare floppy drive is working.

The "HDD" still didn't seem to do anything though. I will try tomorrow to put the CF-adapter in the socket directly. Right now I am using an extension cable so I can reach the adapter without disassembly. Of course I did check the cable by checking continuity on a few pins as a sample, but you never know. I can also try a different adapter, even though the one in there right now is confirmed to work. Or I can try a SD-to-IDE adapter. Some of my Compaqs where a bit picky with the CF-adapters in the past as well and maybe so is this Toshiba. I will do some more tests tomorrow and will let you guys know about the result.

Now I have another simple question. My laptops are generally too old to have heatsinks, thermal pads or anything (486 and earlier), but this Toshiba seems to have some thermal pads, which still appear to be soft. Should I go ahead and remove these old ones to prevent overheating or are they okay to stay despite their age? What do you guys usually do with these old thermal pads?

All of my pentium-class Toshiba laptops still have their original thermal pads, as long as they're still soft and making contact to all thermal surfaces you're good to go.
If your machine has a fan I would test that on a bench powersupply, just to make sure it can turn on when needed but other than that I wouldn't bother replacing them.

FuST, thank you for your explanation. The thermal pads were still fine and the fan was still working. The fan behaves a bit odd though. Most of the time it doesn't do anything, but when it comes on, it spins like it needs to ascend into the air. I think it is built that way though and that it is not something faulty.

It ended up being the IDE-cable in the end, which is a bit weird considering the pins should match. I guess there was some faulty connection somewhere though. The laptop works like a charm now. 😀