First post, by zetatron2000
- Rank
- Newbie
Hello everyone,
A month ago, I bought an old Toshiba Tecra 500CDT laptop, and so began trying to make it my retro-gaming platform.
I will begin by describing steps that I made or tried to make, maybe my story will help someone, or somebody else had similar stories to share or somehow made it work and would like to say how; in the end, I will specify my inquiries and ask the questions that await answers.
The version I have has a CD drive and a possibility to connect an external floppy (which I haven’t found anywhere yet).
There are 2 cardbus slots, and no USB ports. BIOS doesn't have an option to boot from CD, so the first issue was to install OS.
I unmounted HDD and connected it to my desktop PC through USB/IDE adapter; in that way, I was able to copy files.
Unfortunately, PLOP didn't help, as the laptop still couldn't boot from CD.
I have cardbus USB adapter, so I tried PLOP with PCMCIA support - still with no luck, as the bootable USB sticks didn't work.
Finally, I found a thread here suggesting to install Windows from folder on HDD.
I used RMPrepUSB to format hdd, made it bootable and copy Win98 boot disk content. Now, the laptop lets me choose to install windows from CD
or start MS-DOS with/without CD-ROM support. Although, it still cannot boot/install from a CD, the two other options begun working fine, so finally I could
CD WIN98SETUP
SETUP /IO
and windows98se was installed.
The problem I try to solve now is file transfer. Right now, the only way is to either copy to HDD directly from other PC using USB/IDE adapter or burn CD-R.
I bought 10 Verbatim CD-RW, but Tecra doesn't see burned content. My new laptop and desktop read those CD-RW fine, so maybe there are some special settings how to burn CD-RW so Win98 can read them?
With CD-RW failure I installed NUSB drivers and tried to connect pendrive through CardBus USB adapter.
Ufortunately the OS didn't recognise any old pendrives (they were 1GB though) or Microsoft Keyboard KC-0405 I connected. It was looking for drivers, added them as unrecognised devices and then the system freezes.
Next I tried WiFi connection, I have bought D-Link DWL-G630 and EZ Connect SMC2835W wireless cardbus adapters, both did not work.
D-Link once listed some wireless networks around, but got extremely unstable and bluecreened like crazy.
SMC installed its utility but couldn't see network card, and minimise each time I tried to open it.
So now my last ideas are to buy cardbus/LAN card or to set up dial-up server and connect with XJ3288 PC card which I got bundled with laptop and seems to work.
If you have any ideas how to make USB / CD-RW / WiFi working on Win98SE on that laptop please let me know, as I'm already at my limit.
Thanks