Thinkpads Forum

I've got about 3 older HDD's that I can use for backups, but they are too thick for the bay(s) in my 600X

I picked up a Travelstar 8E, PCMCIA external HDD case. Part no. on the box is 34L4223.

Slapping a drive in there, and plugging into the 600X while running EITHER XP or 98SE results in the drive working fine.

What I'd LIKE to do, however, is be able to access the drive when booted from a floppy--in DOS. I've done some searching, and can NOT figure out how to do this.

I assume we are wandering through the mess that are "cardsoft" drivers, but I don't know how to configure them.


I've downloaded some of the cardsoft stuff, but trying to configure them to a floppy is something I can't figure out. If anyone has a good working setup, just posting the config.sys and autoexec.bat. MIGHT be enough--I might have the actual files I need already.

Happy New Year.

I don't know if the following will help or not. I have not tried running DOS on my 600E. You might try creating a RAM disk and putting the DOS files on it. Then you could install the cardsoft drivers and see what changes they make to the Config.sys and Autoexec.bat files. After that you could either create a .bat file to load the drivers after boot up or put the modifications in the Config.sys and Autoexec.bat files on your bootable DOS floppy along with the necessary Cardsoft files.

CardSoft PCMCIA drivers for DOS - ThinkPad General

Hi, thanks. I already found that, and finally last night, attempted to install on the 600X, to C: when booted in Windows 98se (dos mode)


When you start the machine, it does try to load Cardsoft, and spins up the external drive, but freezes at the splash screen. I tried "rem"ing lines out of config.sys one line at a time, so far I haven't figured out the problem. Somehwere I read "not to install" on a Windows machine, I presumed that the program would not work IN Windows.


Let me make it clear---I'm not trying to boot TO the external drive, just be able to boot to a floppy (eventually) and READ the external drive.

Today Im taking a different tack. I'm going to install on my old 360xx (same as a 755xx) and see if I can get THAT working, then copy the config over to a floppy, and see if I can modify/ duplicate for the 600X

440roadrunner wrote:Let me make it clear---I'm not trying to boot TO the external drive, just be able to boot to a floppy (eventually) and READ the external drive.

Yeah, I understood that part.

I know that the order of loading the device drivers is sometimes important in DOS. The CardSoft drivers may need to be loaded into expanded memory or extended memory, or then again maybe they can't be loaded high. You might experiment with this. Buffers can be important. Files can be important. The version of DOS you are using can be important.

What I am not clear on is if you are using a Windows 98 Startup Disk, or a true DOS disk. If you are using DOS, which version is it?

I just found this text file that may help you while I was trying to get information on your problem. http://24.237.160.4/files/drivers/PCMCI ... README.TXT

Thanks very much for your help. I screwed around all day with this thing, found and downloaded a WHOLE BUNCH of different stuff from IBM, including what you suggested, with little help

I DID find the stuff for my old TP 755/360 series, and made a boot floppy with that on there, and the drive works fine in the old 360. The same floppy won't recognized the drive when fired into the 600x


(I've been around and around so many times I don't remember, but I used the DOS/carsoft/whatever right from IBM for the 755 series)


I messed with cardsoft, etc, blah, blaw, and finally found some sort of diagnostics file in all of it, which identified the card as here:


http://www.shining.com/download.html





Well, heck after that it was easy. Just downloaded the DOS based files, did a "format a:/q/s" and copied the drivers to the floppy, then made a config.sys with two whole lines:


device=a:\pcmi80cl.sys
device=a:\stidehdd.sys


And, it works just swell. NOW I have a backup drive, that (I dearly hope) I can boot and use with Ghost from a floppy.

I happy for you that you found a solution.