I recently purchased a bunch of ibm 300GL comuters from where I work so that I could donate them to a school. The hard drive, I believe, has formated and there is absolutly nothing on it.(not even DOS) When it comes up it tries to read from the a: drive and say non system disk replace and hit any key. I downloaded the "Ultimate Boot Disk" from the web. When I use it, my computer still does not recognize that my cdrom is even hooked up. I have the disk for the installation, but it says that I am missing a file and it could not be installed. I need the cdrom in order to install windows 98se. Do I need to install DOS on the computer before I do anything else? I am looking for answers. I am a very green beginner and am looking for answers (hopefully step-by-step instructions). Please help.

I have bootdisks available for download on my website. It does have the nessessary drivers to get almost any CDROM drive working. They are generic bootdisks, but I have them from DOS 5.00 to Windows ME. Since you are going to install I suggest that you download the one for Windows 98 SE. Another bootdisk will work, but if you download the Windows 98 boot disk, you will not have to create one during the installation proccess of Windows 98. That will save you about 10 miniutes of installation time. My website is here: http://www.geocities.com/k_semler2002/index.html. The bootdisks are on the page labeled "Links, Downloads, and Bootdisks". You can access it though the pull down menu I have on the page.

Will this let my computer recognize my cdrom so that I can do the install

Yes, the disk has the proper drivers to make your CDROM work. you will be able to install Windows once your CDROM is working..

Even if your PC is very old,it can recognize the CD-ROM at BIOS level (the hardware the machine has does know that there is a CD-ROM). Your problem is that MS-DOS (the "operating system") needs drivers for being capable of using the device. If you have the original PG300 setup disks, you don't need MS-DOS disks, but have to re-configure the BIOS and make the machine capable to boot from the CD-ROM Every IBM machine has a part number and serial number, located at the front bezel, most likely at the low right side. You can go to www.ibm.com and then to the support section, and find all the information for your machine, with the exceptiopn of the operating system. Good luck