Toshiba Tecra 510CDT fresh OS install problems.

[LeftCoast]

Hi all,

Not exactly sure where to put this, as the problem has many roots...

Brief history of the TECRA 510CDT: It was probably a bad-a*s computer in it's day, but considering it's going on nearly it's 3000th day (8 years old)... As far as I can tell, there's no option to boot to the cd-rom drive in the bios(which I could do to run www.killdisk.com , and wipe the drive). No usb, no RJ-45, and external floppy port is proprietary. Also, although it originally came with it, the owner "threw out" a bag full of dongles and an external floppy drive, because he never used them and wanted to clean out his house of "junk"!

Here's the info/available downloads from the Toshiba site.
http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/t...ceghdgngdgll.0

I'm doing some "chartiy" work for the unemployed neighbor, and this laptop IS his only computer. He was given a full version of WIN2000Pro, and I did what I thought was a "fresh" install of the OS, but all it did was basically upgrade his really broken install of win98, transferring all programs/settings to win2000(which was not my intention, I wanted to wipe the drive). Also, I'd like to update his bios, as the newest version is @ 3 years newer than the one he has.

What I'd like to accomplish:

1) Wipe the HDD clean so I can install Win2K FRESH.
2) Update the bios
3) Fix the cd-rom issue that's preventing him from opening certain files in media player. Mp3s open no prob. JPGs open no prob. MPEGs...problem(it used to work OK, before he tried upgrading to a newer WMP; drive just constantly seeks, and doesn't even read disk size in My Computer.)
4) Find some alternate way to hook up another floppy drive.

This is starting to tick me off, as I feel I should be able to "out-think" something that doesn't have a brain...I feel as though I'm missing a simple solution , that DOESN'T include any/much cost, as again, he is unemployed and my charity doesn't include out-of-pocket expenses!

Thanks again, and I'd appreciate it if we could all put our thinking-caps on for this one!

[John Prophet]

hmmmm


so you got no cd boot, no floppy..hmmm, lol

only way I can think of is to take the hard drive out...get a 2.5 to 3.5 adapter http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp?invtid=HD-108 and copy the install files or the whole disk to the laptop hard drive...but I still dont see how it is going to boot....hmmmm

how are you going to even flash the bios without a floppy?

[LeftCoast]

Quote:

Originally Posted by John Prophet

how are you going to even flash the bios without a floppy?

I guess I'm not! (unless someone out there has an old Tecra and wants to loan/donate the floppy; I still can't believe he tossed this stuff out)

I was thinking about that lappy HDD adapter as well, but the HDD pins connection look proprietary also, and not to today's standards.

It will take up to two Type II (and 1 type III) expansion cards...maybe these cards are available to add USB, and an external usb floppy...just thought about that now. He's definitely gonna need to come up with some cash!