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Hello,
I recently bought a laptop off ebay. It is a IBM Thinkpad 560x. It doesn't come with a CD-ROM or a Floppy Drive. On top of that it came without an OS installed on it. I was wondering if there is a way to somehow use my Desktop Computer's CD-ROM or Floppy to boot up the laptop and install an OS. Can I use my Desktop's interal CD-ROM as an external one for my laptop? Is this even possible? If so, will it cost me anything? Or will I need to go out and spend some more bucks just to buy a CD-ROM and use it once to install an OS. Please help.The laptop's specs (incase):
233mhz (MMX)
32 MB Ram
256K
4.1 GB HD
And it has many ports. Including an external Drive port.
Is one of those many ports an Ethernet port? If it is, you can get a network boot disk at http://www.bootdisk.com and install over the network from your desktop's cd-rom.
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You didn't say what the OS was. If you can connect with an ethernet croosover, do so. Otherwise see if you can use Win's direct cable connection with a parelell to parelell cable. Share your CD rom drive (right click the drive icon and choose sharing, set up is obvious.) Then copy the WinCD to a directory such as c:/win98. Reboot the laptop, press F8 before windows loads, choose command prompt only, and the C:/Win98/setup. The setup process will begin.
There are further issues if the OS on the laptop is NT or W2K.
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"On top of that it came without an OS installed on it"
You suggestions for making the physical connection between the laptop and desktop are sound, but he still needs a boot floppy to startup the laptop and use the connection.
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Ok, well. Since I don't have an OS installed, does that mean that I can't use an External CD-ROM or floppy port by connecting my interal Desktop's? And no, there is no ethernet port on the laptop.
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"On top of that it came without an OS installed on it"
Your suggestions for making the physical connection between the laptop and desktop are sound, but he still needs a boot floppy to startup the laptop and use the connection.
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you could go to the ibm site and see what all can be plugged into the ports, but you will probably need to buy the CDROM drive specific to that model...
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Darn. I was hoping that I wasn't going to have to buy anything else. I allready spent a lot of money on a 233 mhz laptop. So, there is no way at all to network drives without a running OS? Like a plug and play device? I dont know.
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without a CD or Floppy driver you are .... SOL. :)
You will have to purchase one or the other in order to install anything on the laptop. Being that it is a 233 the floppy would probably be better, as certain models did not support boot from CD.
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Ryan, see response #1. You can download the files for a floppy disk that will boot to DOS (there's your OS) with network support, assuming the laptop has an ethernet adapter. Then you can access the windows install files on your desktop computer over the network. Or, you can use a direct cable connection as technotony suggested.
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Yeah I seen it. But I don't have a floppy or CD-ROM for the laptop. I thought I could've easily hooked some sort of serial cable (as example) from my desktop to my laptop and use my desktop's floppy drive. So I guess I will need to go out and buy an external floppy or something. :(
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Oh, im sorry. I guess I didn't read your post well enough to understand. Are you saying that, if I have an ethernet port I can actually boot the laptop from my desktop computer without needing an OS on the laptop.
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You're still in the same boat, Ryan_man, response #9 missed the part of your original message stating no floppy.
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Ok, well. To answer your questions, No I don't have an ethernet port on this laptop. It came with only the windows 98 command.com. It did NOT come with any type of floppy or CD-ROM drive. I have no idea how i'm supposed to install an OS on this thing. Also, I have no idea how I would boot the laptop off a network.
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Hi Ryan. You've really got three choices that I know of:
First you can buy a CD Drive for the laptop(IF it supports booting from CD).
Second you can buy a floppy drive & try to find a bootdisk that supports Direct Cable Connection in DOS (I don't even know if that is possible).
Third, you can buy a 2.5 inch hard drive adapter cable which will allow you to remove the HD from the laptop, temporarily install it into a desktop pc as secondary master, copy the setup & cab files from the CD to the HD, and then reinstall the HD into the laptop to run setup. The cables are inexpensive (about $10) and if you can't find one locally, you can order one here:
http://www.cablesonline.net/25hdmounkitw.html
I would also go to IBM's website & look for any updated drivers, etc. Then when you copy the Windows files, you can also copy the drivers to the hard drive.
Once you have an OS installed, you still won't have any way to install any software unless you either pickup a crossover cable & use DCC (which is sloooooooow) or pickup an ethernet card & ethernet crossover cable (assuming that you have a NIC in your other PC.)
Hope this helps.
Dave
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Ok, thanks for the suggestions. It's too bad they didn't create a plug and play networking cord. They don't right? Someone told me that I could buy a USB networking cord that would be plug and play. But anywho, yeah I think ill go with your last option, taking the HD out of the laptop and installing the OS from my desktop. I'll go out and buy that hard drive adapter tommorow.
I just want peer-to-peer networking, so once Windows is installed, i'll be using simple paralell cables to transfer some files.
I appreciate your help, and thanks. Ill let you know if I get it to work.
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