Thinkpads Forum

I have a new-to-me 770e. Ez-setup reports system unit serial number 9549-52U.....
but the label on the bottom of the computer says 9548-52U.....; all the numbers are
the same except the 9 on the screen is an 8 on the label.

The cdrom drive is seen and passed OK by easy-setup.

It has W95 on the hard drive. While booting, among other messages is
'Inadequate configuration to load firmware setup'. I don't know what
firmware it means or whether it's relevant to my problem.

It does boot, but it does not see any cdrom in the drive.

The bios is version IDET38WW, dated 9/17/99.
The driver matrix lists the latest version as 1.34, IDET38WW, but it
is dated there as 12 Oct 2001.

I have a working knoppix cd so I tried to boot from it.
The thinkpad finds the drive and starts its boot process just fine but hangs after
going partway through. It searches for, and can't find , first the /dev/hd
devices (ide) and then the /dev/sd (scsi) devices. ('looking
for cdrom in: /dev/sd0')

I have a spare cdrom drive. I swapped it in, with no change.

So even though the diagnostics say it's ok and even though
it seems to work ok as the knoppix boot process begins,
it's not ok.

Any suggestions about what has failed or how to look further?

Thanks

CK

It is probly doing this becauase some-one replaced the motherboard useing the same chassi.

You can try this: Go to Start > Control Panel > System > Hardware > Device Manager. Click on the plus sign to the left of DVD/CD-ROM Drives. Right click on your CD-ROM drive and choose to uninstall it. Next click on the plus sign to the left of 'IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers'. Right click on all devices listed, and choose to uninstall them. Now reboot. Windows should find the devices and install them properly.

Note: It's possible with Windows 95 that you will need a Windows 95 install CD, but I doubt it. I did this on a Windows 2000 laptop and I didn't need the install CD to restore the DVD/CD-ROM to proper operation.

You don't say which version of Knoppix your trying to boot, but if it is the 2.6 kernel you will have to pass "knoppix pnpbios=off' as your startup argument. That will tell the kernel to ignore simple boot flags in the Thinkpads bios and assign correct interrupts to the drive controllers ect.

It sounds like your Win95 install is stuffed though, it may be easier to reinstall from scratch than chase down the registry error that is causing the firmware error and losing your optical drive.

Thanks.

GomJabbar: There is no cdrom entry in device manager. w95 doesn't know it's there. there's
nothing that I can find to uninstall.

Cavialier(may I call you by your first name?): I know about the cheatcode and am using it.
I've tried both 3.6 and 3.8.
I haven't just wiped the w95 because if knoppix can't find the drive than I suppose
another windows probably won't either.

Laptop_wizard: If that's the problem is there any way out (short of new motherboard)?

ckaufman wrote:GomJabbar: There is no cdrom entry in device manager. w95 doesn't know it's there. there's
nothing that I can find to uninstall.

OK, but you can still uninstall the IDE entries I mentioned earlier. Since the CD-ROM ties into the IDE bus, the problem could be with the IDE bus. If there is a problem with the IDE ATA/ATAPI Controller, it can cause your CD-ROM not to work, or not to work properly. As I mentioned previously, Windows should find the IDE devices on startup and reinstall the drivers.

Thanks. I had not tried that and it does look fishy. There were two entries for ide
controllers. They had different irq's and memory assigned to them. I removed them
both and rebooted. w95 then found 'new hardware' , found the drivers, and
installed the controller. But it wasn't done-it found another ide controller and
installed it also. But all that accomplished was to put me back at square one: Two
entries in device manager for ide controllers, but still no optical drive seen.

chuck

ckaufman wrote:But all that accomplished was to put me back at square one: Two entries in device manager for ide controllers, but still no optical drive seen.

Find a set of generic CD drivers for W95 and try installing them.

Or try this: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... JJR-3QJKQV

Regards,

James

Hi James
Thanks. I guess the first post must have happened while you were dead.

I went to the link you gave. Her's what looks to be the relevant part:

_________________________________
Windows 95

Windows 95 comes with a generic ATAPI CD-ROM device driver that works with your computer's CD-ROM. You do not need to install a new device driver for your CD-ROM.

Note
If you upgraded to Windows 95 from DOS or Windows 3.x, you must disable the original DOS/Windows CD-ROM device driver in order to allow the generic Windows 95 device driver to work effectively.


To enable the Windows 95 generic ATAPI CD-ROM device driver, follow these instructions:

1. Go to the MS-DOS command prompt.
2. Open the CONFIG.SYS file.
3. Find the following line:
DEVICE=C:\xxxxxx\IBMTPCD.SYS /D:TPCD 1.....
where xxxxxx is the subdirectory where you have installed the CD-ROM device driver. If you cannot find the line, quit the file and go to step 5.
4. Comment out the line, changing it as follows:
REM DEVICE=C:\xxxxxx\IBMTPCD.SYS /D:TPCD 1.......
If the line is already commented out, quit the file and go to the next step.
5. Open the AUTOEXEC.BAT file.
6. Find the following line:
C:\xxxxxx\MSCDEX.EXE /D:TPCD 1.....
where xxxxxx is the subdirectory where you have installed the CD-ROM device driver. If you cannot find the line, quit the file and go to step 8.
7. Comment out the line, changing it as follows:
REM C:\xxxxxx\MSCDEX.EXE /D:TPCD 1......
If the line is already commented out, quit the file and go to the next step.
8. Exit the MS-DOS command prompt; then restart your system.
You have now completed the modifications required for the CD-ROM device driver.
_________________________________________________________


I don't know the history of the w95 installation so I followed the instructions
for removing the drivers.

config.sys did not have the lines referred to, nor did autoexec.bat.

So that set of instructions (paraphrased) is: do't do anything to config.sys, then
don't do anything tot autoexec.bat. I did that.

Result: no effect.

As for a generic set of drivers, while looking for them I found

http://www.bugnet.com/analysis/disappear_cd-rom.html

which might be the answer. It would not explain why knoppix doesn't complete its
installation but knoppix might be failing for some other reason-eg there's another
cheatcode needed that I don't know about.

However the link above rquires a patch from intel, and the page referred to, at
intel, gives 'page not found'.

If it is just a w95 problem then a new install of a new os would be easy. I am
not jumping to do that because I do have a working, sort of, tp as is.

Chuck