At 09:35 AM 12/27/2000 Errol Lishman wrote:
>
>I have given my son my old Compaq Contura 430CX laptop which is an Intel 486
>with 8 meg ram running Windows for Workgroups V3.11 / DOS 6.22.
>
>My question is this, as most software is on CD these days, and this machine
>does not have a CD drive, how can I connect a CD drive to this machine. I
>can't afford an external drive right now so I was hoping I can cable-link my
>works laptop to this machine and install software this way. My works laptop
>is a Compaq Presario 1920 PII running Windows 2000 Pro.

Errol:

You have several options. You could:

  -     get a null modem cable and use transfer software such
        as LapLink or Fastlink. Put the software on boot
        diskettes for each PC, and do a clean boot.

  -     install a network device and make a network connection

  -     use a modem on the laptop and transfer

  -     borrow external parallel port removable media drive
        such as a a zip or jaz drive; or a parallel to SCSI
        external CDROM drive

The WFW 3.11 era software used mostly diskettes for installation.
An i486 with 8MB of RAM on a laptop hard drive is not an ideal
platform to run any software which needs a CDROM for installation.

Good luck.

John Chin

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