I am a new member of this forum and I was wondering if I could get some help with an IBM Thinkpad 600e.
Currently, I am trying to install a Linux distribution to this machine. For reasons, the developer of this distro has chosen to only provide an ISO file that is 3.8GB in size (too big for CD). Since my 600e came with a CD-ROM optical drive and I know that this machine is incapable of USB boot, my natural idea was to upgrade the optical drive to a CD/DVD-ROM (I saw that some 600e models shipped with DVD drives back in the day).
This the particular one that I purchased and installed: https://www.ebay.com/c/1700070891
After installing, the drive opens and closes. I burned this Linux distro to a DVD-RW (1-4x) disk and popped it in. I hit F1 to go into BIOS and boot from CDROM (this is what the option was called still even though I installed a DVD-ROM). Unfortunately, it did not boot from this DVD disc and said there was no boot media inserted. This DVD disk DOES work on another old laptop I have and boots successfully on that one. I tried a different distro on a CD and tried to boot that as well, and that did work. My next idea was to burn to a DVD-R instead of DVD-RW as maybe it had something to do with the format. This still did not work.
I am now wondering, do I need to update my BIOS or does the Thinkpad 600e even support boot from DVD or is it boot from CD only? I don't think the drive is defective because it was able to read the distro that was on the CD.
Here are my system specs:
BIOS Version: INET35WW, 11/20/99
Processor: Pentium II (366 MHz)
System Board Information
Model/Submodel/Revision: FC/01/00
Power management version: 1.11
POST /BIOS Version: 1.20
Video version: 1.15
Setup version: 1.09
Slave controller version: 1.08
If I cannot find a way to boot from DVD on this device, would I be able to connect my hard-drive to say, another computer and install it onto the drive using that computer? The hard drive interface is PATA.
Thank you for your help!
