Laptop Bios can't find CDROM -.- Any tips?

[alm4rr]

HI
My bro just died and so I've got his laptop and am trying to retrieve his files on the Windows partition (I'll deal with linux files (if possible) later on). Well, I was gonna use direct cable connection from laptop to my desktop (his OS=95, mine-98se) and transfer files, but doesn't work right. But here's the real problem for now...

The bios does not seem to recognize that there is a CDROM there. It's three spindle unit (floppy,cdrom,hd) and everything else works fine (except his smashed lcd but I swap monitor between my comp and laptop)

It's an ASUS L7300 under Chembook name, and I've put everything possible for drive to be found in DOS and Windows, but comp won't see it. I planned on cleaning up his files to CD-R and giving the laptop back to my parents.
Any ideas what I can do with the bios? I'm pretty sure its a Phoenix ver. 0210
I took out the HD and there were no jumpers on it, indicating 'DRIVE 0'. The biod doesnt detect any Chan1 slave or Chan2 masters. I don't think I can take the CDROM out without taking apart the case.

Any clues??

(Celeron 300, 64meg, 4gig w/w95 & Caldera (maybe???))

 

[Luke727]

<< HI My bro just died >>

. God, what a morbid way to start a post. Sorry about that, by the way. Moving on, the first thing I'd do would be to check out the bios and see if someone disabled the CD-ROM or the seconday IDE channel or something similar. If everything seems fine, go ahead and try taking out the CD-ROM drive and see if there are any jumpers and/or loose connections/wires. If not, put it back in and see if it gets detected. If not, you might try looking around ASUS/Chembook website for bios updates or troubleshooting, or maybe e-mail them. Or check out fanboy websites. One time I took my Dell Inspiron 5000 completely apart and Windows (2000) redetected all of my hardware. There's some nifty stuff inside notebooks. 😀 If nothing works, the drive or other components may be dead. And for the love of God, don't start a post like that ever again. My condolences.

 

[dude]

Sorry about your brother.

Does the floppy or cdrom work in that bay that the cdrom is in? If so, it may be a bad cdrom. There are no jumpers on the cdrom you can mess with. There is one on the hard drive, but it's covered by the casing around the drive and the connector is the device that sets this master/slave for you so don't try to mess with it.

Try using a generic cdrom.sys or btccdrom.sys file in your config.sys file. In Win95 systems, it was used, but the newer Win98 and up will load it and just use the Microsoft CD driver when it goes into windows.