External CD-ROM on Laptop with no USB?

[Poppa_Meth]

I was just given a prehistoric laptop that has nothing but a diskette in it. There are no USB ports. It has an IR, serial, parallel, and dock port. Also a bay is open for a addon card but I know nothing about laptops never having owned one so I'm not sure what I can put in it. Newer cards don't look like they'd fit it correctly. Regardless, I'm not going to use it for much at all, just to put text guides on for when I'm playing games on my PS2 and find myself in need of some info. It's rediculous trying to do anything with the diskette though. Any solutions? I have a CD burner already in a USB/Firewire enclosure but is there any way to interface it with the laptop? Also, its running Win95.

[redwudz]

I know what you mean. I have a W95 laptop I drug it out of the closet to try to use for instructional videos. Check closely, It should have a PCMCIA port for CardBus cards. If so, most any Cardbus card may work, but you would need the W95 drivers. They usually come with the card.

If you have a PCMCIA slot, USB may work, or even Firewire, though those drivers are harder to find for W95. If you use a USB card, external CD drives are possible, even USB 2. Go to the laptop's manufacturer's site, download and install the latest BIOS and whatever other upgrades are available.

I can tell you if it's old, this will be more of a hobby than a useful venture. You can also input through the parallel port, but it will take some reading and a cable to do this.

Funny how state of the art technology from a 'few' years ago can be so ancient these days.

You also may be able to replace the OS with W2000. It will run with minimal memory.

[yoda313]

Hi,

You also may be able to replace the OS with W2000. It will run with minimal memory.

Umm... Don't know if that would be wise on a w95 era laptop. Win 2000 needs a MINIMUM of 64 mb ram to operate. Plus if you can't get the cd drive to install you won't be able to load it at all.....

Best of luck though.

Kevin

EDIT - Plus its a mb hog. doesn't it take like a gig of space to install???? I remember my old Pentium 200mhz only had 2 gig with win95.... Just fyi

[Poppa_Meth]

This thing has less than 600MB of HDD space and I believe 8MB of RAM. Joy!!!
I have no problem with 95 on it for no more than I'll use it for. All the cards I'm seeing list OS as 98 or 98SE and up. Nothing I've found so far has 95 drivers. I'll keep looking though.

[redwudz]

yoda313, you're probably right there. I stuffed W2000 into a W95 laptop. Not too stable. I had 64MB memory, though, and a 10GB HD. I just have so much residual irritation with W95 after dealing with it, just about anything, even Linux, (No offense, anyone ) would be an improvement.

But if you just need simple stuff, such as data management or word processing, with little high end graphics, W95 will work with an old laptop. Just not 'User Friendly' for networking or newer graphics.

EDIT: "600MB of HDD space and I believe 8MB of RAM. Joy!!!" Now that is prehistoric. OK, I have my doubts about PCMCIA, but maybe.

[Poppa_Meth]

I got this thing from work. We use to run out pain color formula books on it till a couple years ago. Just found it setting around collecting dust recently. It runs surprisingly fast to be honest with you. Boots faster and opens apps quicker than any other PC in my house
Not bad for a 75Mhz Pentium!!
I've already messing with a direct cable connection, but going from XP to 95 with it is just too much trouble IMO. If I could just get a USB port on it for my pen drive I'd be happy.

[Poppa_Meth]

Found the site for the thing.
http://www.ari-service.com/blender/cache/501788-301.htm

[ofbarea]

According to the link this laptop uses Cirrus Logic CL-PD6730 PCMCIA controller.

This chipset should support 32 bits cardbus cards, but this function should be enabled in the BIOS. Just download and install the latest bios and find if you could enable CARDBUS support.

For USB, at least you should be running W98, have CARDBUS enabled and get a USB pcmcia card.

With this laptop you could also use a PCMCIA or parallel port CD.

[Poppa_Meth]

The problem is finding the hardware. I'm not paying $85 for a PCMCIA CD-ROM, which is the cheapest I've found so far. Guess I could check ebay. But on there I could get a newer laptop for $200.

[Poppa_Meth]

I have the latest Bios flashed but unfortunately see nothing about CARDBUS support.