Member Avatar for viperman224

ok. you guys are going to laugh. I just recieved a Toshiba T2115CS (i think) from my friend. Anyways, It has no cd-rom drive. Is it possible and how do I network this machine in DOS 6.22 so i can install windows 95 or 98 (havent made up my mind yet which one i'm gonna install). Will this work with all the other machines running 2000 pro or XP pro? thanks

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Short answer: yes — you can get Windows 95/98 onto that Toshiba without an internal CD-ROM. was right that a networked transfer is possible; below are DOS-friendly, practical options (ranked easiest → more advanced) that avoid repeating the Slackware/NFS suggestions already in the thread.

  1. Copy the installer to the laptop hard drive (easiest/reliable). Remove the laptop HDD (or use a USB↔IDE adapter or a CF→IDE adapter), copy the entire Windows CD folder onto the drive (place it at C:\WIN95 or C:\WIN98), reinstall the drive, boot DOS and run the setup executable from that folder. Pros: no NIC drivers, very fast. Take normal ESD precautions when handling the drive.

  2. Use MS‑DOS Interlnk / Intersvr over a serial or parallel cable to copy the installer. Start INTERSVR on the desktop and INTERLNK on the Toshiba, then copy the Windows installation directory to the laptop. If one side lacks the utility, use INTERLNK /RCOPY to push the tools across. This avoids networking hardware but needs a correctly wired cable and a little patience. (pcjs.org)

  3. Do it over Ethernet from DOS: load a DOS packet driver for a PC Card/PCMCIA adapter, use an mTCP toolset to get an IP address, then use its FTP client to pull the installer from another machine. Typical flow (exact packet-driver arguments depend on the card):

C:\NET\NE2000.COM 0x60    (example - adjust for your card)
SET MTCPCFG=C:\NET\tcp.cfg
C:\NET\DHCP
C:\NET\FTP 192.168.1.2

mTCP uses a small tcp.cfg (PACKETINT 0x60 or whatever your driver uses) and works well with NE2000-compatible cards; packet-driver parameters vary by adapter. (brutman.com)

  1. External USB CD / DOS USB drivers (hit-or-miss). Loading a USB ASPI driver + USB CD driver and MSCDEX can make an external USB CD appear in DOS so you can run setup directly, but success depends on the USB/CardBus controller and driver set you use. (bootdisk.com)

If the machine is very low on RAM (32MB), Windows 98 will be slower than 95; plan accordingly. For quick success: try the HDD-copy method first, then Interlnk, and use DOS networking only if you want to avoid opening the laptop.

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Member Avatar for i686-linux

No reason to be ashamed of old hardware! As long as it posts, it's a usable machine! I too have one of the old Toshiba laptops that was given to me as a freebie, and I absolutely love it. PI-120mhz, 32mb RAM, and 2.0gb HD. Anyways... It is possible to obtain Windows 95 (and possibly 98, though not positive) on a set of floppy disks. This is not the most popular way to install Windows 95 as it requires something along the lines of 20 or more floppies. (I honestly don't remember the exact number, as it has been years since I have seen a set of these.) If you are unable to find a set of these disks, then it is possible to install a number of other operating systems via FTP/NFS. I am not sure what your background is, or how familiar you are with other operating systems, but post if you are interested and I can reply with a few suggestions.

Member Avatar for viperman224

I am verry interested. Thank you for your help. My background in operating systems is fairly good. I can load them and uninstall them. I have installed 98 many times. again, Thank you verry much for your help.

Member Avatar for i686-linux

The method that I used when limited to floppy disks was setting up an NFS server at home, and using the Slackware Linux boot floppy to load the software packages from the NFS server. This requires having a supported NIC. A good recommendation is the Linksys PCM100. (NOT the PCM200) If you don't have the resources to setup an NFS server (a bit of overkill if you'd only use it for this one process) then there are methods of installing Slackware linux over FTP, though this is a bit of a "hack." The main ones for Slackware that I know of are called and SlackFTP. If *BSD interests you more, lots of documentation is available on http://www.freebsd.org for installing a system via either NFS or FTP. (their installer provides native FTP installation support, no hack jobs! ;-)) Here is a quick link, but you may want to do more background reading before you jump right in.

I am sure there are many other possible ways to do it, and we all know how well linux and bsd runs on older hardware. You could even run X on this with a very low resource window manager like blackbox, or twm, but I would recommend keeping it to the CLI as much as you can. I have seen Windows 95 run very smoothely on these older laptops, but to to your limited installation method, this seems to me like the best way to go about this.

Good luck, and if you have any further questions, I may be able to help you out!

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