IBM TP 360C TYPE 2620-30f - What/How to do with

[simple1]

Well, just pulled this out of a drawer. Boots right up into dos; w95 is missing some files and I'm not to good in dos.
Kay, hard drive is 340MB, too small for most OSs. Built in floppy, NO cd or even a place for it? Please correct me - can i load the cd in the cdrom from the TP 770 and put it where the floppy currently is? And NO usb. Currently has a token ring card and a modem card in the pcmcia slots, but no cables.

Did I mention just how nice the keyboard is?

I got 3.11 on floppies; otherwise How to get cdrom access? How to get usb access. Name a suitable os -I'm thinking w95 again? maybe 98(se)?

[whizkid]

That's an oldie!

You cannot put an internal CD drive in the machine. Your best bet is to connect one via the parallel port, or use one over a network.

You have 16-bit PCCard slots, and it seems there never were any USB cards that were made for that older style, so you cannot use a USB device of any kind.

Your CPU is a 33MHz 486SX with no co-processor. Microsoft says minimum for Win98 is 66MHz WITH co-processor. It needs 16MB RAM but 24MB is recommended. A full install takes up to 255MB of disk if using FAT32, up to 355MB if using FAT16. I'd bet Win98 will run.

One note: This machine is not fast enough to play an MP3 file. Not even close.

Windows 95 looks like the sweet spot (as such) for that machine. You might have luck with FreeDOS too.

The system will take 32MB memory cards, if you can find them.

I run Linux on my 750P, but it has a co-processor, so if you wanted to do that you might have to built your own kernel on another machine, and that's not trivial. [censored] Small Linux might work. I haven't looked into it.

You can put up to an 8GB drive in there for sure, and maybe larger if you have a C partition that is 8GB or smaller.

[leoblob]

I've run WIN95 on my TP360 with 12 MB and a 486sx33. It's slow, but usable (of course, what do you want to use it for? )

A parallel-port CDROM is by far the best solution. It should come with a bootable DOS diskette that loads the needed drivers. Then your CDROM will appear just like another drive at the A: prompt and you can go ahead and install your OS from a CD.

I agree that the keyboard on those 360s is very nice.

[pianowizard]

Windows 95 First Edition came in 13 floppy discs. See if your friends have a set, or if you can get a cheap set on eBay.

[ajhidell]

I just put [censored] Small Linux on a 560X. It may work with your old machine. You can check out my post on what I did here.

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=58468

Also you can look into BasicLinux. It loads into RAM from 2 floppies and can be installed to the HDD. Very minimal but can have a GUI with a browser, etc.

I have been testing it on a 365XD, 8 mb RAM, 1 GB hdd, and it works fine.

So, I would try [censored] Small Linux, and if that doesn't work, then try BasicLinux. BOth recognized my Netgear MA401 wireless card right out of the box.