Posting in hopes that this will help the weary googler; I see so many dead-ends when it comes to resolving this issue. Heard that it works on other PCMCIA CD-ROM enabled laptops as well.

Cheers,
Anne

How to create a Win98se boot disk for the Toshiba Portege 3110ct laptop

NOTE: This is the method I use for re-installing my old trusty Portege. It works better then using a DOS 6.22 boot disk, because you can use the FAT32 (over 2GB) partitions right from the start and not have to play around with re-partitioning the hard drive after to OS install. I have used this method to install both Windows 98-XP and Linux RedHat 9.0 on my laptop, all without a problem.

Download:
Windows 98 SE OEM Bootdisk executable at: http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm
PCMCIA CD-ROM Driver (ARCCD.SYS): http://www.cdrom-drivers.com/drivers/38/38745.htm

Insert a formatted 3.5” floppy disk into the A drive and run the boot disk executable “boot98se.exe” to image the disk.

After the imaging is complete copy the ARCCD.SYS file over to the disk.

On the disk - Edit the CONFIG.SYS file:
Change: device=oakcdrom.sys /D:mscd001
To: device=arccd.sys /D:mscd001

On the disk - Edit the AUTOEXEC.BAT file:
Change: LH %ramd%:\MSCDEX.EXE /D:mscd001 /L:%CDROM%
To: LH %ramd%:\MSCDEX.EXE /D:ARCCD01 /L:E > NUL

Save the file changes and remove the disk. Name the disk “Toshiba Portege 3110ct Boot Disk” **optional, but it’s always good to know which disk is which later.

Setup the laptop; connect the PCMCIA CD-ROM, floppy drive and AC power.

Put in the floppy disk and turn on the system.

After it’s done booting and you’re at the A:> prompt you can run fdisk to erase any old partitions and create new ones, format an existing disk, or just go right into the OS setup. See other documents for those instructions.

With the Windows 2000 OS disk in the PCMCIA CD-ROM drive type:
A:>E:
E:>cd i386
E\i386:>winnt

This will begin the setup.