CF-25 MK1 CD Boot

I know about the bios upgrade for the MK3 to boot from CD, but is there any way a CF-25 can boot from a CD? I'm trying to turn a CF-25 MK1 into a dedicated MSDOS 7.10 machine to program radios with. I've had it with Windows 95 (cannot get the stupid pcmcia working no matter what I've tried, and I DO NOT have the original factory disks)... (as a diversion none of the panasonic.ca regedit hacks work) I think it's because I loaded with Windows 95B but unsure) and at this point I just want to install MS DOS 7.10 and be done with it.

I'm willing to accept the fact I'll always have 3 useless pcmcia slots under MSDOS 7.10, but I don't care.

I'm having so much fun with the CF-25s I now own 5 of them, 3 MK3s, and 2 MK1s. I like them, they're so compact and so sturdy. I've got all new batteries in them, and am about to hack a permanently installed Cisco LC350-series pcmcia into one of the MK3s that had an antenna mounted for the RIM. It's currently running Windows 2k but I'm about to convert that into linux since I know I can get all the hardware working on it.

The MK1s however, just need to figure out how to boot from CD, otherwise need to make an MSDOS 7.10 boot floppy and see how to install from there. I obtained a very cool MSDOS 7.10 distribution from vetusware.com

I guess there is something wrong with me but these CF25s are just so cool.

 

Both my cf-25's i'm fairly sure would boot from the panasonic cd drive
One was a 133 and the other a 166
I'ts been years since I used them but I know that I did bios updates on both
of them
So long that I don't ever remember the mk#s for them
The Bios was realy strange in the early models


Alex

 

Hi Alex,

The bios update for the MK1 "C" series doesn't indicate booting from CD fixes, although the "L" (MK3) does. If you check setup25 it shows nothing about booting from CD.

Anyway this is so arcane, I know most people would say "Why bother?" but it's worth it to me since the radio programming software I'm using only works on slow machines, and only under DOS.

 

I the days that I had my cf-25’s I had a backpack cd-rom drive that hooked in the parallel port
You would boot to the floppy drive that had the drivers for the backpack cd drive
At that point you could boot to the cd to load windows
On my 166 model it had the cd drive and it booted fine

Do you want me to look for it?
If I still have the backpack drive around I could send it to you as I have not had a use for it in years

Alex