Laptops :: IBM ThinkPad 701CS

I recently got a ThinkPad 701CS, one of these:

for free due to the fact that the battery exploded some time ago (thankfully not damaging the battery contacts or the laptop itself) and the crappy IBM OS/2 Warp v3.9 OS.

It doesn't have a Parallel port (so no parallel CD-ROM), no USB, refuses to boot off of my 8mb PCMCIA flash card, the crappy OS doesn't support DOS drivers of any of the PCMCIA CD-ROMs I have, so no bootloader, but it DOES have IRDA and floppy boot support.

Any help?

Wow, is that one of the butterfly keyboards?

The specs from thinkwiki:

Quote

One of the following processors: Intel 486DX2 50 MHz Intel 486DX4 75 MHz CT-65545 video controller with 1MB 10.4" DSTN display with 640x480 resolution 4 or 8MB memory standard 360, 540 or 720MB HDD ES688 audio controller Folding TrackWrite keyboard 14.4K Modem IrDA 1.0 (2) Type II, or (1) Type III PCMCIA slot

RAM might be tight if you want to have graphical, it's ram can be upgraded to 24MB though which should be comfortable. Sound whould work automatically. You *need* atleast 8mb to boot any current linux floppy, some older ones work with 4mb.

I'd say boot with a suitable floppy, and then transfer stuff around with either a 16-bit pcmcia lan card or irda.

DSL can also split itself into floppy-sized pieces, but moving a floppy 40+ times back and forth is.. not comfortable. Noisy and slow.