CF-25 Drivers Req

I have a CF-25 which i'm trying to upgrade with a new hard drive but i can't find the right drivers for it. The serial no. is CF-25EGF4TBE . I've googled this no. but nothing comes back about it. I think it's to do with the TB part. Any help would be appreciated.

 

you shouldn't need drivers for a HD swap. Have you checked the panasonic.ca website? i'm not sure if they still have 25 drivers but my guess is that they would. I've still got a working P-166 CF25 if you want me to look for a specific driver.

 

Hi,
i have just read you message and would like to ask if i may for your help with my cf-25.It power up fine but i think the hard drive must have been wiped as it askes me to press F1 and enter setup.Unfortunatley i dont have any start or setup disk for the cd rom drive.Could you please offer any advise or help with getting this up and running?

 

Do you have a media pocket CDROM drive? I'm pretty sure the OAKCDROM.SYS driver will enable it. If you've got a W98 recovery disk, it's on there. But since you can't operate the floppy and CDROM at the same time, you'll have to copy that and MSCDEX over to the hard drive, along with an appropriate CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT. You will then have access to the CDROM for loading your OS.

 

yes i have a cd drive in the cf-25 but no floppy drive in the unit.I Am sure i have an old win 98 cd somewhere at home.do you mean i will have to burn these specific files onto another cd to use as a start up disk for the cf-25.? Then load an operating system?
Sorry to task you so much but i am no wiz with computers.
Ivery much appreciate you taking some time and trouble to help.

 

I misunderstood.. you don't HAVE a floppy drive for it? That complicates things. I wonder if you can boot from CD on a 25?: I'll have to try it on mine and see.

 

I do on the other hand have a IDE converter which allows me to plug a note book hdd into a tower pc hdd and set the note book hdd to slave.I know i will need to setup an ide hdd with fat 32 rather than ntfs file system as the note book hdd is only 4.3 gig.I hopeing that this will be big enough to install win 98 and a workshop manual for my car.This is my intended use as a garage pc.
Once again i am grateful for your update,
cheers.

 

If you have the adapter then do it that way. 4.3GB should be plenty.. I have me 25 set up as 2 GB for W95 and 2 GB for NT, and there was always enough room to do what i needed to do.

 

Can you tell me how i enter the notebook bios on bootup,i am use to just hitting the delete key on my tower system.This fails to work,i have also tried F2 as i read somewhere on a simular forum that other CF notebooks use this command.

 

IIRC, you need certain disks to read it, not like a 27 where you can actually change things.

 

It is telling you to press F1 to enter setup that is the way you enter the BIOS on the CF-25 you don't need disks to get in there.

 

Hi
thank you so much for your imput,Please can i ask why when i press F1 and the screen comes up indicating that information should be entered by a startup floppy disk.The notebook has no floppy disk installed only a cd rom.How can i change the bios then to read the cd rom first.As at present i cannot access the bios?

 

Hi, thank you so much for your kind imput to my problem.Please may i ask for some further explanation to your reply as i am not sure what IIRC is refering to.Sorry to be below speed on this.

 

Sorry you mean if i recall correctley.Doh

 

The F1 key has to be pressed at the exact time in the boot process you may have to hit the key repeatedly as soon as the option appears. if not it will try to boot from the hard drive and since yours was wiped it will give you the message you are seeing. Unfortunately it wont hep you to get into the BIOS because on my unit the only boot options are floppy and hard drive even with a CD ROM drive installed. To setup windows you will need to do as Gravitar said and that is to prepare the hard drive with a config.sys and autoexec.bat with generic CD-rom drivers. This is all old school so depending on how old you are you may not even know what DOS is much less how to create those two files.

 

Seems like this would be the easy out.
http://http://cgi.ebay.ca/Panasonic-Toughbook-CF-25-CF25-Floppy-Drive-FDD-GOOD_W0QQitemZ120020771181QQihZ002QQcategoryZ13154
I don't know if this drive is different from the 27-28-29 floppy which you can probably get from any number of people right here, but if your time is worth anything this seems like a cheap fix. Good luck.

 

thank you so much for pointing out the option to buy an ex cf-25 floppy drive off ebay.I looked at the UK ebay site with no luck but failed to check US. There are several for sale,this could as you say get me out of a hole.

cheers.

 

I very much appreciate your kind info,i will investigate what you have said about DOS file creation.I am not the sharpest knife in the draw on computer problems,but neither am i a quitter.So with a little help from more experianced people i may get there in the end.Thank you for your time you have spent to help me.
cheers.

 

good god that's expensive for a floppy drive. they are unfortunately different from the 27-28-29 though, so they might be able to command such a price.

Here's a thought.. I could send you a pre-loaded HD set up for a CF25 if you want.. PM me if you are interested.

 

I would be most interested in your kind offer,please send further info if it is convienient.