[RESOLVED] MICROTECH PCMCIA CD ROM Driver needed.

[ChrisH]

Hello,
I have a Toshiba Laptop (Portege 3020CT)
it doesnt have a built in CD ROM drive, and I have a Microtech PCMCIA external CD rom DRIVE.

To install the Toshiba Product recovery Disk, the CD rom drivers must be copied onto the toshiba Boot disk, then changes manually made to the Config.sys

The mircotech website says that drivers for the PC card CD ROM drive are those given by win98.

Does anyone have the drivers for this CD drive?

the toshiba doesnt have a built in cd drive, so I cant boot from it.

and without the driver I cant access the CD drive, so cant install anything onto the blank hard disk.

Thanks for your help
Chris

[easeltine]

Chris,

Did you ever get an answer regarding this Microtech PCMCIA CD ROM. I bought one on ebay for my older laptops and the drivers are not contained in Windows 95, or Windows 2000, or OS/2 Warp 3 for that matter.

Microtech gave you the answer that Windows 98 contains the drivers? I will give you money for the driver.

Erich

[NooNoo]

Welcome to Windrivers easeltine

YOu mean the DOS drivers? You just need a win 98 start up disk... www.bootdisk.com

[easeltine]

That's all there is to it?

Thank you!

[easeltine]

www.bootdisk.com.....What a website!

[easeltine]

No, the Windows 98 Start-Up does not contain the PCMCIA drivers.
If Microtech is correct that the drivers are part of the Windows 98 O/S system then the only way to correct the problem would be to install the Windows 98 O/S on the hard drive before hooking up the CD-ROM.

This would either be done by another Laptop that has CD-ROM support or one of those adapters to use a laptop hard drive on a desktop. Once the Windows 98 is installed you would put it on the old laptop and plug and pray...I mean play that the O/S would take on the laptop...generally it does after a few plug and prays.

Another point is that the CD-ROM drivers are not on the Start-Ups for NT 3.51 or NT 4.00.

This CD-ROM is alot of work. I am going to charge up the batteries in mine, take a cigarette-AC Adapter, two little power speakers, and tape it into my 1992 Silverado so we can have music in the car. I do have it playing music.

[NooNoo]

Right it wasn't clear you wanted the pcmcia drivers... Can you post the exact details of the pcmcia card?

it might be generic enough to work with this but it depends on the pcmcia slot as well. You need socket services to work...
toshiba have this one too

there are more downloads at toshiba

[easeltine]

Hi Noo,

I just bought this card and CDROM from Ebay. The item is a Microtech part number PC-CD TO10-3 PCMCIA CDROM.

I have tried the Toshiba Driver for OS/2 Warp 3 without success. I also tried to install a version of Caldera Open Linux dated 1998, but the modules did not have the driver with them.

It is amazing that I can't find a driver out there on floppy anywhere?

Erich

[easeltine]

I am going to try that IBM Driver tonight.
The old laptop I am using is an AST Ascentia 900N 75 Mhz w/ 32 MB RAM...OK don't laugh, I have 3 of them.

[easeltine]

All the O/S's, (Windows 95, OS/2, Caldera Linux), are able to see the PCMCIA Card, but they are not able to access the CD-ROM. They are calling the Card a ARC ATAPI. I have not investigated what ARC ATAPI means.

[xpuser357]

This is where you will find about http://listing.driveragent.com/pccar...3e30fdd1dfe84d

[NooNoo]

Panasonic versions http://www.pcdrivers.com/cdrom3.htm
ARC is a make of CDrom... I found two models XS4424 and XS8432 however every time I hunt for a driver I only come up with this which is the same as xpuser's except this can be downloaded for free... at your own risk.

[easeltine]

Noo, that last free driver from driverguide.com, (which I was a member), did the trick. I could not get the other drivers to work. Though this is a CD-RW CDROM driver it does have the DOS driver on it for this Microtech PCMCIA CD, (and this is a very old CDROM, must be 2X).

It still needed a little bit of tweaking. One needs to take the DOS driver and copy it onto a Windows 98 Start-Up disk. I installed Windows 95, but cannot get 95 to recognized the CDROM driver. What I ended up doing is installing Windows 98, and inside of Windows 98, (2000 doesn't have it), is this ARC ATAPI CDROM driver.

Now, Windows 98 is slow on a 486, but I think it is actually quicker than Windows 2000 Pro on a Pentium III. You have to take a coffee break when Windows 2000 comes up.

Thank you,

Erich

[NooNoo]

Glad to hear it. I don't usually recommend that site, but it was the only other place it could be downloaded. 98 is slow on a 486 but if you uninstall everything you don't need it will speed up a little... that and maxing out the ram will help. I have 98 running on a 486 ibm laptop... slow but it's good enough for surfing on holiday and if it gets nicked then there is no worries about losing something valuable. Plays Kings Quest pretty good too!