Thinkpads Forum

My 760C that I was given for free needs a reload. I have to overcome the problem of no way to get the data on the hard drive. This Legacy model has no usb or cd rom. It had the old style port for the floppy so the cd rom that is often seen on ebay wont' fit in the port. Since I will need to load software and windows 98... I have some challenges ahead.

I need to get a CD rom drive on this baby and need to put in the largest hard disk it can handle. First does anyone have an idea of how to get a cd rom drive installed on this computer.

Next question if I want to get a larger than 1.2 gig hard drive for it. How big a hard drive will it handle with out too much difficulty. I have seen some 5 gig hard drives on ebay for this model. Will it take an 8 or a 10?

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... JEK-3R7PDV These are your CD drive options. These are all hard to find models on Ebay. I've got a Portable Drive Bay 2000 recently for a pretty good price, but I guess it would cost you more than just buying another 760 with an internal CD.

You are in a much better shape with the HD. Here are your options: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... JOS-3QHUB3 There are plenty of these on Ebay, and the prices are pretty reasonable.

Regards,
G-Man

Thank you for the references for the hard drive and CD drive. I looked up one on ebay and found a 5 gig hard drive going for about $22 plus 7 for ship. it has a little while before it closes.

On the subject of installing an operating system on the 770C laptop without a cd drive. Can I use another computer to transfer set up files on to floppies and load them one at a time on to the hard drive and then do the install?

How do you get the files off the win 98 cd and do the install when all you have is a floppy, a formated hard drive and a computer booted up with a start up floppy but no cd drive.

I have a network and a pcmcia network card but don't know how get my network card to run under dos and configure it to install the windows 98 on the 770C from another cd drive on the local network.

Thomas

[quote]How do you get the files off the win 98 cd and do the install when all you have is a floppy, a formated hard drive and a computer booted up with a start up floppy but no cd drive...

There are other ways of doing it, including cycling floppies , but I find old trusty Laplink (version 5 in my case) can do the job simple. Laplink5 is a little DOS program and can be downloaded from various windows utility websites including the pin assignments (if you are wiring your own cable) of the special parallel cable. Using your desktop machine, copy all the win98 files from the cd to a temporary folder in your hd. When done, run Laplink on both laptop and desktop (DOS mode of course), and just choose the menu and follow the prompts for transferring files when the two machines establish communication. The communication link is through the special Laplink cable via their parallel ports.

Tom,

Tom Starich wrote:How do you get the files off the win 98 cd and do the install when all you have is a floppy, a formated hard drive and a computer booted up with a start up floppy but no cd drive.

Get a 2.5" to 3.5" IDE adapter from your local computer store and install the 760's HD in your desktop temporarily.

Copy the i386 folder from the W98 Cd to the HD, put the HD back in the 760 and then run "setup" from the DOS prompt.

Regards,

James

Thank you all for your responces, I think I have enough information to get started now on doing the job. I just have to pick up a larger hard drive. I am interested in purchasing a the biggest hard drive the machine will take but not larger than 15Gig. I am going to start another post which asks the question How big of a hard drive will the 760 C take? And close this thread. Again Thank you all for joining in and offering me assistance on this topic.