I am trying to do a clean install of 98 on an older laptop with an external cd-rom connected thru a pcmcia card. I am booting up using a win 98 startup floppy. I chose to start with no cd-rom support and after I get to a:\ I then install the pcmcia cd rom setup floppy, reboot this time with cd-rom support and then look for my cd-rom drive in which to run my 98 disc. I can not get the player recognized to do this. I was able once to run setup and have 98 load but it had to be aborted because of a setup procedure that I missed. I reformatted the hard drive and now... this is where I am at. Any help with this would be appreciated.

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LNG724 wrote:
|[...]clean install of 98[...]external cd-rom connected thru a pcmcia card[...]
|after I get to a:\ I then install the pcmcia cd rom setup floppy[...]
|
You understand that until you see the Windoze desktop, you are in DOS. 
 Right?

|I can not get the player recognized[...]
|
...and that the device driver you need is a DOS device driver.

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Thank you for the response. So, the driver I was putting in for the player and ppcmcia card is not correct? Where am I to find the correct dos driver for this?


On Friday, February 8, 2008 at 2:53 pm, gewg_ wrote:
>LNG724 wrote:
>|[...]clean install of 98[...]external cd-rom connected thru a pcmcia card[...]
>|after I get to a:\ I then install the pcmcia cd rom setup floppy[...]
>|
>You understand that until you see the Windoze desktop, you are in DOS.
> Right?
>
>|I can not get the player recognized[...]
>|
>...and that the device driver you need is a DOS device driver.

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

First, it's rather complicated to even be successful at doing this with an older 
system.

Second, when you rebooted, you cleared everything out of the memory so whatever files 
you had loaded would have to be resident on either the HDD and your autoexec/config.sys 
have to correctly point to the location either on the HDD or the floppy to load. 
 If you reformated the HDD and that's where they were installed to, they would be 
gone and you load nothing.

If you want an idea of what is involved in loading drivers so that even an on-board 
USB device will be recognized through DOS, look here:

http://www.bootdisk.com/usb.htm 

There are other guides all over the web, but yours will be complicated by the fact 
that you are using an add-on device, not a device on the motherboard.

Can't really point you to a well written guide for your specific needs, as I had 
little success with older machines that didn't support USB for booting when it wasn't 
an option in the BIOS.  Either way, you have to make sure your autoexec and config.sys 
are correctly addressing the CD ROM and all drivers needed, after the drivers for 
the hardware are loaded.  On top of that, you only have so much memory to use for 
loading drivers etc so your memory handler needs to be correct also.  (Also loaded 
in the config.sys file)  Configuring a DOS environment isn't easy if you don't have 
the old school experience in doing it, and there aren't that many guides around for 
doing it anymore, but they can be found with enough searching. 







On Friday, February 8, 2008 at 2:36 pm, LNG724 wrote:

>I am trying to do a clean install of 98 on an older laptop with an external cd-rom 

>connected thru a pcmcia card. I am booting up using a win 98 startup floppy. I chose 

>to start with no cd-rom support and after I get to a:\ I then install the pcmcia 

>cd rom setup floppy, reboot this time with cd-rom support and then look for my cd-rom 

>drive in which to run my 98 disc. I can not get  the player recognized to do this. 

>I was able once to run setup and have 98 load but it had to be aborted because of 

>a setup procedure that I missed. I reformatted the hard drive and now... this is 

>where I am at.

>Any help with this would be appreciated.  

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

LNG724 wrote:
|Where am I to find the correct dos driver for this?

Once more into the breach:

What is a "driver"?  A device driver is a software adapto-kit
which allows an operating system and a piece of hardware to work together.

BEFORE you purchase a piece of hardware, read the side of the box.
Make sure that **YOUR** OS and your **VERSION** are listed as SUPPORTED.

If you are planning to use an external drive to INSTALL Windoze,
it must have **DOS** device drivers available for it
or (USB) must have direct support in the BIOS.

Who produces these "device drivers"?
If you think about it just a moment, it's obvious who benefits most from that:
THE *MANUFACTURER* OF THE **DEVICE**.
(This is also the reason that SOME brands are PREFERRED.  Think: Linux; OS X)


As C K said, tweaking a CONFIG.SYS file to get DOS device drivers working
is something the novice rarely executes properly the first attempt.

If you can't even deduce where one might *find* the item,
it seems unlikely to me that you will be able to actually get this working.

...and as C K said, the fact that the hardware is old doesn't improve your odds.

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

That once happened to me. I put a message to the manufacturer's site and explained that it was important to me and could they help. The next morning I found an email from one of their techs the DOS driver as an attachment.


On Friday, February 8, 2008 at 3:17 pm, LNG724 wrote:
>
>
>Thank you for the response. So, the driver I was putting in for the player and ppcmcia
>card is not correct? Where am I to find the correct dos driver for this?
>

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If you can't fit a square peg into a round hole, get a bigger hammer!! 


If you still can't get the external CD-ROM drive working after all the advice given, 
you may want to try this as a last resort. 

Make sure the drive is formatted first, remove it from the laptop and connect it 
to another computer via USB using an external hard drive case. Then copy the entire 
win98 folder from your Windows 98 installation CD to the hard drive.

Reinstall the hard drive back into the laptop, boot from the floppy and run the Windows 
98 installation from the win98 folder on the drive.

It all depends on how difficult it is to remove the hard drive, and how badly you 
want to use that laptop.

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

|[...]once[...]I put a message to the manufacturer's site
|and explained that it was important to me and could they help.
|The next morning I found an email from one of their techs
|[with] the DOS driver as an attachment.
| dhm

Slightly related (as a *Compare and contrast* item):
I'm wondering if the kernel of the on-bootable-floppy versions of Linux
have integrated PCMCIA device drivers
and would allow the installation of Linux from this external drive--no muss, no fuss.

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

Clever!


On Sunday, February 10, 2008 at 1:42 am, Arminius wrote:
>If you can't fit a square peg into a round hole, get a bigger hammer!!

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