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Toshiba Libretto floppy drive+pcmcia

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First post, by my03

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Hi dear Vogoners,

i recently acquired a Toshiba Libretto CT110 and i love this little piece of hardware 😀 I got the docking station with it but unfortunately i did not get the floppy drive.

The drive was dead so i replaced it with a 2.5 CF adapter (as master) together with a 2GB card and after preparing the card with a bootable win98 and moving the 98 SE installation onto it, i now have a full installation. So far so good.

But my main question is really: Was the toshiba floppy/pcmcia combo really some OEM from somebody else? I have seen Sony units that looks very similar on Ebay, and other places. Would it be possible to use such units instead of the Toshiba branded ditos? (would it even boot from such a device??).

While looking for the floppy/pcmcia online i did notice that ppl want ridiculous amount of money for them (as much as the computer itself) which is of course funny. While i do manage to swap in files using the pcmcia slot (sd->pcmcia adapter), it surely would be nice to use the floppy from time to time, hence my asking this.

thx

Reply 1 of 6, by Thermalwrong

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It's made by someone else 😀 The floppy drive is actually a YE Data Flashbuster PCMCIA floppy drive.

It looks like you've already found the Sony FA-P1, usually available much cheaper than the Toshiba branded one. The only difference being a longer cable. Both are OEM versions of the YE data drive.

I just checked the Sony FA-P1 with my Libretto 70CT and it booted from that without any trouble.

Reply 3 of 6, by manicgamer

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Yes, the Sony PCMCIA floppy drives work with the Libretto without drivers, the BIOS can boot from a PCMICA disk drive.
HP and Compaq also work. There's a special key sequence also to update the BIOS from the floppy drive.
HOLD F12+POWER ON starts the BIOS update procedure.
http://www.minuszerodegrees.net/manuals/Toshi … oshiba_bios.htm

The Floppy drive was only really required for updating the BIOS and MBR. But if you like the sounds
and 30kB/s data transfer then that's great 😀

If it ain't broke, there's something wrong with it.
Like your job, Love your wife.
Beware of Geeks bearing GIF's.

Reply 4 of 6, by Bondi

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And here are Win2k, 98, 95 and DOS drivers for this floppy.

Attachments

  • Filename
    YEPCFDD.rar
    File size
    97.57 KiB
    Downloads
    392 downloads
    File comment
    Win2k 98 95 DOS drivers
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception

PCMCIA Sound Cards chart
archive.org: PCMCIA software, manuals, drivers

Reply 6 of 6, by Bondi

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rbarquer@yahoo.com wrote on 2023-09-15, 13:18:
Bondi wrote on 2020-08-25, 19:58:

And here are Win2k, 98, 95 and DOS drivers for this floppy.

Hi, would these drivers you shared work with the Sony FA-P1 floppy drive?

Of course!
The only thing is that in DOS it doesn't work on all laptops. But it's a problem of the driver, not the drive.

PCMCIA Sound Cards chart
archive.org: PCMCIA software, manuals, drivers

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