Thinkpads Forum

Hi all.

I have recently acquired a thinkpad 380e. I understand it is a prehistoric laptop and i am only using it as something to do.

I have purchased a CD-Rom drive and have attached it to the computer via the slot above the floppy drive. The installation seems to be sound as the drive opens and closes on request and also has an LED on it which lights up when opened and closed.

I can't however seem to install it. For example, the add hardware wizard is not finding the part and i cannot read anything from the drive.

If it helps, the drive is numbered - 12J0115 and the computer is running windows 95.

Any help would be greatly appreciated as information on this issue is hard to come by due to the age of the kit.

Thanks in advance,

Martin

MODERATOR EDIT: Moved to the appropriate forum.

First thing I would do is to boot the computer with a WIN98 (or 95) diskette that has a CD-ROM driver on it. If you can read data on the CD, you know the problem is in Windows.

In Windows, you can check out the Device Manager under DVD/CD ROM Drives to see if Windows sees it or if you have a yellow (!)

Also check out in ATA/ATAPI Controllers, the Secondary IDE Channel. Your drive should be there as device 0 or 1. Check out the transfer mode (right-click -> properties) if you see PIO or UDMA and try to change it (you need to reboot).

Also on the drive itself, there must be a sticker of some sort showing you the jumper settings (master or slave or cable select), you may or may not be able to change those settings depending on the drive.

I'd start with that.