Help with old laptop--Toshiba Satellite 305CDS

Vcize

Senior member
May 30, 2003
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Ok, I recently go a very old Toshiba Satellite 305CDS from one of my friends for free, and was wondering if anyone with experience with this machine could help me with a couple questions I had.

First, how in the world do I get into bios on this thing? When it boots up it gives some little "get in touch with toshiba" slogan, then says starting windowns 95, then loads windows...nowhere does it say how to get into setup, and I've tried hitting F2 and Del during both of those screens, but to no avail. I'd like to get into to bios to figure out the actual specs on the machine.

Second, can I install an ethernet card into this thing? I know little about laptops, and dunno if there's even a place for it in this lappy. There's a little slot that looks like a place to load a wireless ethernet card, but would a regular one fit in there?

Lastly, anyone know what kind of battery goes with this thing, and where I could get it? And also where I could get an ethernet card that would work in it, or would just a linksys or something work?

Any help is much appreciated, thanks in advance.
 

Yomicron

Golden Member
Mar 5, 2002
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Check out the support section of Toshiba's Computer Systems Group. I didn't notice anything about the BIOS, but I didn't look all too hard. So, try all the F keys durring boot and if your keyboard has any non standard keys try them too.

Your laptop has 2 PC Card slots, so any laptop Ethernet card should work assuming it has win95 drivers.
 

jschuk

Senior member
Jun 29, 2001
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Press and hold down the "ESC" key as you power on the system. That will get you into the BIOS, though you probably will not find much of interest in there. If you are looking to tweak it, and don't have anything to lose, then check out this site. It is in Japanese, but the pictures kind of say it all. Hopefully, it already has extra memory installed as finding compatible memory for that unit is getting very hard.
 

Vcize

Senior member
May 30, 2003
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Cool, thanks for the info! Any idea on what kind of battery this thing takes?
 

jschuk

Senior member
Jun 29, 2001
808
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It uses the very common PA2487URG/PA3107U-1BRS. That battery has been in use since 1996, though it has increased in capacity from 3600mAh to 4500mAh and gotten slightly lighter. Li-ION.
 

Vcize

Senior member
May 30, 2003
418
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wow, nice long model number there. So if I were to type this into ebay, "li-ion" would give me what I need?