I forgot to say that I already removed CMOS battery and the 6 green pack batteries for resering the bios but the hell pasword is still here and still no access to bios…

Have you tried to procure the caddy to install the hard drive in the primary slot? Wondering if that will expedite the boot process.

OVERK|LL wrote on 2025-02-23, 18:07:

Have you tried to procure the caddy to install the hard drive in the primary slot? Wondering if that will expedite the boot process.

The caddy cables are unobtanium... it's a short orange ffc adapter to a 2.5" female ide. I have a 550cdt where the flex cable on the adapter broke as soon as I angled the caddy to remove it.

I haven't been able to find a replacement. The only other option is the second bay adapter, which the OP already has (lucky!).

megatron-uk wrote on 2025-02-23, 18:50:

OVERK|LL wrote on 2025-02-23, 18:07:

Have you tried to procure the caddy to install the hard drive in the primary slot? Wondering if that will expedite the boot process.

The caddy cables are unobtanium... it's a short orange ffc adapter to a 2.5" female ide. I have a 550cdt where the flex cable on the adapter broke as soon as I angled the caddy to remove it.

I haven't been able to find a replacement. The only other option is the second bay adapter, which the OP already has (lucky!).

Ahhh, didn't realize they were rare. I've probably got one kicking around here somewhere, hahah.

megatron-uk wrote on 2025-02-23, 18:50:

OVERK|LL wrote on 2025-02-23, 18:07:

Have you tried to procure the caddy to install the hard drive in the primary slot? Wondering if that will expedite the boot process.

The caddy cables are unobtanium... it's a short orange ffc adapter to a 2.5" female ide. I have a 550cdt where the flex cable on the adapter broke as soon as I angled the caddy to remove it.

I haven't been able to find a replacement. The only other option is the second bay adapter, which the OP already has (lucky!).

Yea I already thought about this but… yea it is… unobtanium ? It means unfindable ? Sorry to be new to the crew 🤣. That’s true I can’t find one on internet… if you have any suggestions to find it I would like to know. But you probably not because of the unobtanium thing…

Do you think the main issue of the low boot is because of using hdd2 onstead of hdd1 ? That’s bad the caddy cable adaptor is not the same from hdd2 to hdd1… I don’t know at all what the connector is for the hdd1

Yes, it means unavailable. Not easily obtainable.

As far as I am aware the second bay adapter is different as it uses a rear connector that allows for floppy, cd, battery, HDD etc, so it's not the same as the primary one.

Someone was looking at a DIY compact flash adapter that fit on top of the socket the original orange ffc ribbon cable attached to, but I don't think there is anything available off the shelf.

I suspect you will have to keep looking for a 530 or 550cdt that is complete and use it for spares.

This is the 550cdt cable, btw:

Mine just cracked/snapped where the cable attached to the small PCB that the ide header is soldered to. I barely lifted the drive caddy up to unplug it and it snapped. It is very fragile.

Honestly, beyond getting a second machine for spares, the fact you have the selectbay 2nd HDD adapter is probably the best option. I have been looking for one for months!

megatron-uk wrote on 2025-02-23, 20:22:

Honestly, beyond getting a second machine for spares, the fact you have the selectbay 2nd HDD adapter is probably the best option. I have been looking for one for months!

Ok thank you. But if it makes the booting so long it’s not very good 🙁 I use adlibtracker 2 for the opl3 sound and I would love to be able to use it in live but this very long waiting make it unusable for that purpose but I will probably record it before and play it on my computer. Not as cool as using the real hardware in live but better than nothing.

But about the password and the inaccessibility of bios I don’t get it. It is probably not happening because of the hdd2. And also, the very long time before asking password is here even if hdd2 is not inserted, so maybe it’s finally not related at all to the fact of using hdd2 as hdd1 ?

I believe there is a dos utility that takes you direct to the bios, I can't remember if I used it on my 480cdt or the 550cdt (before the HDD cable snapped).

It wasn't specifically for either model, but it did seem to work.

Can anyone else remember what it was called?

I'm sure I have/had one of these cables, I'll look around and if I can find it, it's yours. I'll send you a DM if I find it. My basement is a tech nightmare, so no promises, but I will look.

OVERK|LL wrote on 2025-02-24, 00:17:

I'm sure I have/had one of these cables, I'll look around and if I can find it, it's yours. I'll send you a DM if I find it. My basement is a tech nightmare, so no promises, but I will look.

Thank you very much ! 🙏

megatron-uk wrote on 2025-02-23, 23:27:

I believe there is a dos utility that takes you direct to the bios, I can't remember if I used it on my 480cdt or the 550cdt (before the HDD cable snapped).

It wasn't specifically for either model, but it did seem to work.

Can anyone else remember what it was called?

Thank you ! I will make research for find it too. I already tried something which named tsetup (toshiba setup) or something like that but it just made nothing. I don’t if it’s the same thing or not

About the usb stick I finally make it working, using USBASPI.SYS and DI1000DD.SYS which I downloaded

Adding these lines in CONFIG.SYS :
DEVICE=C:\DOS\USBASPI.SYS /v /w
DEVICE=C:\DOS\DI1000DD.SYS

I recommend to reflash bios first:

https://web.archive.org/web/20220531051143/ht … ds/4520tv67.exe

If this not helps, you can try to cleanup password using LPT port adapter:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4dMmZsG0is

My opinion if laptop boot slow and tsetup.exe does not do anything, something wrong with bios or you got bad memory chip (needs to test with MemTest86). 98048KB is weird amount of memory.

I have 510CDT with secondary HDD adapter and it boot pretty fast even without main HDD installed.

USB flash drive works acceptable in MS-DOS using drivers.

MAZter wrote on 2025-02-24, 13:54:

I recommend to reflash bios first: […]
Show full quote

I recommend to reflash bios first:

https://web.archive.org/web/20220531051143/ht … ds/4520tv67.exe

If this not helps, you can try to cleanup password using LPT port adapter:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4dMmZsG0is

My opinion if laptop boot slow and tsetup.exe does not do anything, something wrong with bios or you got bad memory chip (needs to test with MemTest86). 98048KB is weird amount of memory.

I have 510CDT with secondary HDD adapter and it boot pretty fast even without main HDD installed.

USB flash drive works acceptable in MS-DOS using drivers.

I am trying to reflash bios with the link you provided. I can't do it because it wants a diskette and I don't have floppy drive.
the first file extracted the files but then there is a 1018D670.exe file which is a diskette image but I can't extract it or Mac or wine. When I launch it on freedos it just says it's an installation diskette.

Maz Hoot wrote on 2025-02-24, 18:23:

I am trying to reflash bios with the link you provided. I can't do it because it wants a diskette and I don't have floppy drive.
the first file extracted the files but then there is a 1018D670.exe file which is a diskette image but I can't extract it or Mac or wine. When I launch it on freedos it just says it's an installation diskette.

Got it, I can extract files for you today, so you will be able to run flash program from HDD instead of floppy.

MAZter wrote on 2025-02-24, 18:27:

Maz Hoot wrote on 2025-02-24, 18:23:

I am trying to reflash bios with the link you provided. I can't do it because it wants a diskette and I don't have floppy drive.
the first file extracted the files but then there is a 1018D670.exe file which is a diskette image but I can't extract it or Mac or wine. When I launch it on freedos it just says it's an installation diskette.

Got it, I can extract files for you today, so you will be able to run flash program from HDD instead of floppy.

Thank you very much !

Maz Hoot wrote on 2025-02-23, 17:57:

I recently get a Toshiba Tecra 530CDT. ... I tried to enter the bios for remove this strange password but it don’t work. I tried […]
Show full quote

I recently get a Toshiba Tecra 530CDT.
...
I tried to enter the bios for remove this strange password but it don’t work. I tried keep esc, press esc+f2, keep shift left, even beethoven symfonies on F keys at startup but if I do that I get infinite beeps…
...

I have no idea how similar these are .. I still have a: Toshiba Tecra A3

To enter BIOS, you press F2 (repeatedly) at power-on (No Esc, other Fkey, Shift etc... just F2)

The BIOS is a Phoenix, IIRC it's v1.9

Btw, again I have no idea how similar these are or if it would be at all compatible, but I do have the
"factory restore" DVD for the A3 -- WinXP -- if you have an XP license sticker on the bottom of the
machine (meaning it shipped from Toshiba with XP).. you *might* be able to use this to put XP back
it!

Dave ::: https://dunfield.themindfactory.com ::: "Daves Old Computers"->Personal