Thinkpad 560z. Need a little help please.

My friends mom has an old Thinkpad 560z and I am trying to get the internet to work on it. First off, it has Windows 98 SE. Secondly, it has no CD-rom. I though, have a usb floppy disk drive by LaCie and was wondering if there was any way to get it to work or to get my usb flash drive to work without an internet connection? I tried installing drivers that are already on the hard drive but I've had no luck. Thanks.

 

You're trying to get the Ethernet port to work?

 

Sorry no, there is no Ethernet port. There is no rj-11 port either. They have a PCMCIA slot and a wireless card but it doesn't work. I have no way to get the drivers installed because I can not connect to the computer.

 

Does it have the drivers installed now? The 560z has a USB port. It's USB 1, which will be slow, but you should be able to dump the drivers onto the machine via a flash drive.

 

No I cannot get the drivers onto the computer. When I connect it, Windows 98 tries to install the drivers for it but doesn't succeed. Under device manager it shows the yellow circle with an explanation point over it.

I tried reinstalling the driver and choosing the "display a list of all driver..." option. I installed it as a Universal Serial Bus controllers but that didn't work and neither did for Storage devices. Is there an option under here that may work?

I guess I'm just trying to find away to get the usb flash drive to work without installing the actual driver for it although I know windows 98 doesn't support it. I figured maybe there might be a way around it.

Thanks!

 

I know with a lot of PCMCIA WiFi cards they recommend installing the driver before inserting the card. Perhaps that's worth a try.

 

I know but my whole problem is that I can not connect to the computer anyway to install anything. I am not able to connect the computer to the internet, nor can I access it through USB. All I have to work with is what is on the hard drive.

Would you say there is no options for me?

 

Access what through USB? Does your USB port work? If it does, download the driver onto your flash drive then dump the driver installer onto the 560z via the flash drive. You can run the installer from the 560z, then plug the WiFi card in.

 

It looks like the flash drive isn't compatible with Win98; I don't imagine there's a generic WiFi card driver on the system itself...I don't know man, maybe use a USB CD Drive?

 

If the flash drive isn't working you could try a self extracting zip file that's broken up into smaller files to accommodate the smaller floppy space limitations. Depending on the size of the driver installer, it may take some time.

 

I'm sorry I don't think I'm being clear here. Windows 98 SE does not come with generic USB drivers on it. So, I cannot access my USB flash drive, and therefore cannot transfer any files from my flash drive to the 560z. Nor can I use my USB floppy drive. In device manager my flash drive and floppy drive show up with an explanation point on them, and neither show up in My Computer.

I'm looking for a way to transfer files onto the computer but I don't think I have any options without buying something to connect to the parallel or serial port.

 

Does it have an 1394 port?

 

No, it does not.

 

does it have a CD drive? Maybe try burning the drivers to disk.

EDIT: sorry. didn't read the original post carefully.

I don't know if you have any other way of getting the drivers into the computer. Sorry.

 

I'm not sure about specs of the TP 560z, but anyway:

I assume no FDD, no CD. USB sticks not working b/c of missing Win98 drivers, wired LAN not present, PCMCIA WiFi not working. No FireWire.

Then I believe only possible solution is to take out the HDD (should be 2.5" PATA drive?). Converters between 2.5" PATA and 3.5" PATA are available everywhere for cheap, should you connect it to desktop with PATA, or USB<-> PATA cable (again for cheap everywhere), should you connect it to another notebook. The disk partitions are probably FAT32, should be readable by any Windows or Linux.

Copy the drivers to the disk on some other machine. Put the disk back. Install drivers within Win98, get USB stick and/or wifi working. Continue as usual.

 

Thank you much! Very helpful! I will look around for cable and give it a shot.