pdrom,ever heard of this?

[hokiedave]

Hi, Im not the most computer illiterate guy, but Im really struggling here. Recently I bought my daughter a used pentium 1 , 133mhz 32mb ram Panasonic toughbook laptop. It came with dos on it, but it has a weird rom drive that Ive never even heard of. It takes a cartridge or cd and its called a pdrom(old school). Problem is I cant get it to work. it opens and closes, but I cant get any drivers to work for it so that it is recognized. I went to the panasonic site, and DL'd several files that are for this model, including the manual and cd drivers. Couldnt get anything to work. Emailed Panasonic about my kids new (used, but she thinks its the bomb) CF-62 TOUGHBOOK and the problem about the driver for the cd/pdrom. They sent me an attachment to create a first aid disk using a zip file. I unzipped the file and found the following: UP FOLDER, MKD FOLDER, WINDOWS FOLDER, VIDEO FOLDER; and AUTOEXEC.BAT, COMMAND.COM, CONFIG.SYS, IO.SYS, and MSDOS.SYS

Now, I have no idea where to start so I open the folders and look, and the windows folder and the up folder are for the most part empty. The mkd folder has many files, about 30, several executables. One of the files is the MK1STAID.EXE so obviously thats what I want to do. I choose this option and it acts like it cant read the a: drive to write the first aid disc. over and over i see: Insert floppy and in drive a and press any key. when I push any key, it gives me that same message again. Can someone please help me? Can I make this 1st aid disk on another machine, and if so, how without changing my windows 2000 system files to 95 crap. Already done that one time, so evidently I need instruction. Thanks in advance for your advice.--dave

[Computer_Commando]

...Can I make this 1st aid disk on another machine, and if so, how without changing my windows 2000 system files to 95 crap....

I would say Yes.  It should just make a floppy disk.  Should work on the ToughBook, too.  Put some files on a FD and check to see if the ToughBook can read it.

ToughBook is a good choice for a notebook...nearly indestructible.  New ones are very expensive.

BTW, all the drivers and the Operating Manual are on their website.
http://tcc.toughbook.com/

[Raptor]

Have you contacted Panasonic to request specific instructions?

[hokiedave]

im doing that now. i requested specific drivers that are not available on the website. The only ones available on the website are for the cf-61 and this is a 62, same with the first aid disk, they sent me the one for the 61 and the faq downloadable on their site specifically says I need a separate file for the 62, but since they sent me the 61, I figured maybe it was compatible. Evidently not. I am contacting them again now......be back shortly.