Toshiba Satellite Pro 410CDT System Disk

[gladders]

Hello good people,

I have been setting up a vintage laptop. It's come to my attention that it normally has a special system/DOS disk. It has an external floppy drive that doesn't work properly when swapping disks and I wonder if it's because it needs that special disk to make MS-DOS play nice with it.

Would anyone know where I could find this disk?

Thanks

 

[Malc]

I don't remember there being a special disk for the floppy on the 410cdt but it's been a long time since i had one, The floppy was swappable with the CD IIRC, There were several external cases for floppy only - CD only or cases that could take either floppy or CD for these old toshiba laptops, Toshiba/Dynabook has info / drivers for the 410CDT on the US site. https://support.dynabook.com/support/modelHome?freeText=1073769751&osId=3333614

 

[modem7]

It has an external floppy drive that doesn't work properly when swapping disks and I wonder if it's because it needs that special disk to make MS-DOS play nice with it.

I have a 430CDT. The 430CDT will be close in many aspects to your 410CDT.

There is nothing special that I need to operate the external diskette drive. I do not use Toshiba DOS nor the Toshiba 'flavour' of Windows 95. I possess neither. For example, to create the Windows 95 installation instructions at [here], I used an MS-DOS 6 boot diskette, a CD driver, and a Windows 95 CD that I had laying about.

( Had I a DOS-only machine, I may have used Toshiba DOS on it due to [here]. )

Some 410CDT information is at [here].

 

[modem7]

It has an external floppy drive that doesn't work properly when swapping disks and I wonder if it's because it needs that special disk to make MS-DOS play nice with it.

Do you see the same symptom when the diskette drive is operated within the 410CDT itself (i.e. ejected from its external case, then substituted for the CD-ROM drive) ?

 

[TH2002]

I own a 420CDT, have never experienced that issue.
May you clarify things a bit, when you insert a different floppy disk and type "dir", I'm assuming it gives you a read error or a similar message?

 

[gladders]

No, no read error. It just reports the contents of the previous drive.

Anyway I found what I was looking for - there's a specific Toshiba DOS essential disk. Pity it doesn't fix the issue.

I suspect the external floppy drive I have is from a different laptop model, as it doesn't fit in the drive bay when taken out of its external housing. Could that be it?

It's *weird* that it allows disk changes when installing DOS though...

 

[modem7]

I suspect the external floppy drive I have is from a different laptop model, as it doesn't fit in the drive bay when taken out of its external housing.

The maintenance manual for the 410 series includes a drawing of the 410's 3.5" diskette drive on page 1-9. Does your drive look like that?

Could that be it?

Hard to tell.

In the connectors, do you see any bent pins, or pins pushed through to their housing ?

No, no read error. It just reports the contents of the previous drive.

The same is seen in an IBM AT when a 1.2M drive is fitted that does not supply a 'disk changed' signal. For performance reasons, DOS, not believing that the 1.2M floppy was changed, simply uses what it has already read.

As a workaround, try a CTRL-C key combination after the diskette is changed.

If you are running MS-DOS, then another possible workaround is at [here], noting that you would change the command to reflect a 1.44M drive.

It's *weird* that it allows disk changes when installing DOS though...

If this is 'disk changed' signal related, maybe the installer ignores that and does a diskette read every time.

 

[gladders]

The maintenance manual for the 410 series includes a drawing of the 410's 3.5" diskette drive on page 1-9. Does your drive look like that?

No it doesn't. Mine has a more angular rear and the front seems more compact.

Hard to tell.

In the connectors, do you see any bent pins, or pins pushed through to their housing ?

The connectors seem completely fine.

The same is seen in an IBM AT when a 1.2M drive is fitted that does not supply a 'disk changed' signal. For performance reasons, DOS, not believing that the 1.2M floppy was changed, simply uses what it has already read.

As a workaround, try a CTRL-C key combination after the diskette is changed.

If you are running MS-DOS, then another possible workaround is at [here], noting that you would change the command to reflect a 1.44M drive.

If this is 'disk changed' signal related, maybe the installer ignores that and does a diskette read every time.

The DRIVPARM command fixed it! Thankyou!