Got a question for any of you Portege 3480ct owners out there.

[zbose]

I just picked up one of these on ebay because I was looking for a light, decently fast laptop to use this summer on the road. Since I went the ebay way, I am not lucky enough to be getting a CD or DVD rom for this unit. I am having a bit of trouble trying to figure out what I will need to buy in order to install XP and office, etc on this machine.

Here are my questions for any of you who own one:
Is there any easy way to install XP through the net card?
If not, should I buy the $29 multimedia port replicator and the $19X CD-Rom from toshiba? Or is there a cheaper route to go?
How come the stupid DVD drive from Toshiba is nearly $400 and is there any other DVD drive that will work with this lappy?
My laptop will include a floppy drive... does the floppy use the multimedia port replicator?

Thanks!

-zbose

 

[jschuk]

The only way to setup XP through the net card would be to create a boot disk that would connect to a RAS server that contains XP. Cheapest route would be to buy a 44pin-40pin IDE adapter and use a desktop to copy the i386 files to the HDD (make the HDD bootable to DOS while you are at it). Everyone says they sell for about $7.00 on eBay. Look for a used PortNoteworthy/Targus CD-Rom/DVD-Rom on eBay. I note these drives because the Portege has BIOS support for booting to them, otherwise you have to make a bootdisk. That multimedia port replicator is cheap at $29.00, but you will need a CD-Rom/DVD-Rom to put in it. Look for one on eBay that came from a Tecra 8000/8100/8200. Actually, I have a 24X CD-Rom that I will sell for $20.00 + shipping if you want it. It will fit into the selectbay of the replicator. Of course you can put any laptop drive you want into that replicator, you just need to make sure you have the selectbay plastics and PCB connector on the drive. That laptop will only work with a USB floppy which you should also be able to plug into the USB port on the replicator.

That is a nice laptop. I look for those on eBay periodically too.

 

[zbose]

THanks for the info. After much searching, i decided that the cheapest way to go (to get a cd drive) was to just buy them from toshiba... they seem to be on some sort of clearance, hence the 19 + 29 for the whole setup... while everyone else sells them for over $100. Of course there is the chance that toshiba direct has no stock of them left... I guess I will see.

If I can't get them I will get the adapter that you spoke of and try it that way.

Also, unfortunately, it turns out I ended up getting a 3440ct instead. It was listed on ebay as a 3480ct @ p3 500mhz... and after some more reasearch, I realized it was just the model below. I think it should still perform well enough so I don't really care that much.

But, just to clarify, you are saying that ANY toshiba cd/dvd/cdrw/etc drive will work in the select bay replicator? Because there are some killer deals for some of them.

Thanks!

-zbose

 

[jschuk]

Any drive "should" work in the replicator. The only reason I say should is that sometimes the BIOS will not have suport for a drive. My older Tecra 8000 will not recognize a Panasonic/KME UJDA710 drive, but the Tecra 8100 will (and the 8100 is of the same generation of your computer). If you want to play it safe, I would stay away from some of generic drives and stick with ones made by Toshiba, TEAC, and Panasonic/KME.

The 3440CT is a 500MHz model, the 3480CT is a 600MHz model, everything else is identical. Well there were different OS and HDD configurations but otherwise everything is the same. By the way, that graphics chip will support quite a few games. I played Castle Wofenstein on a Satellite 2805 that had the exact same video chip (overclocked to 125MHz) and a 700MHz processor.

 

[helpme]

If the noetbook supports PXE booting, you can use something like altiris' deployment server. It will make a PXE boot image that connects your laptop to a windows or netware share. You could then run your windows install from there.

http://www.altiris.com