I recently got a Toshiba J-3100GT Model 002 laptop in fantastic condition with a carry case and all the manuals, and I was looking to install a hard drive in it just for the novelty of doing some 286 gaming (mainly Spear of Destiny and Duke Nukem. I might upgrade to a 386 or 486 if one will fit) but that's proven to be more difficult than I originally thought. After a bunch of research I have discovered that the computer uses a very specific Toshiba-made hard drive controller card to connect to a JVC JD3824R00-1 hard drive (as seen here http://electrickery.xs4all.nl/comp/divcomp/26pinHD.html). I've found a few places online that sell the 20mb HDD, but I can't seem to find anything on this controller card.
Does anyone here have one from a T3100/J-3100 that they would be willing to sell me? Or are there any alternatives that I could look into? Going off of the maintenance manual (http://www.arvutimuuseum.ee/portable...shibaT3100.pdf) port PJ8 is where the hard drive controller is supposed to plug in. Looking on the motherboard this is a 34-pin IDE connector, just like a lot of old floppy drives I've seen. I tried looking for some adapters and such to see if I could run an HDD through the computer's parallel or serial ports on the back but I couldn't find anything on that either, so I'm sort of stuck as to what I'm supposed to do.
I ran a little test in DOSBOX and I confirmed that I could install games to a floppy instead of an HDD and run them from that, but I'm limited to 720kb as I'm 99% sure the laptop's floppy drives don't recognise 1.44mb disks (I tried so many times to boot 1.44mb IBM PC DOS 2HD disks I had made, and none of them worked, but when I formatted a 2DD disk to 720kb and put a >1.44mb IBM PC DOS 3.30 image on there it booted just fine. I also tried formatting a 2HD disk to 720kb with a DOS 3.30 image but it didn't boot in the laptop). Another option would be to put a 1.44mb drive in the computer that has a 34-pin connector just like its original drives, but then I still wouldn't be able to run a lot of games that require more space to be installed.
Any suggestions at all? I'm posting this pretty late and I'm tired as all hell, so if this post isn't the most coherent thing in the world then please don't hold it against me :p
Does anyone here have one from a T3100/J-3100 that they would be willing to sell me? Or are there any alternatives that I could look into? Going off of the maintenance manual (http://www.arvutimuuseum.ee/portable...shibaT3100.pdf) port PJ8 is where the hard drive controller is supposed to plug in. Looking on the motherboard this is a 34-pin IDE connector, just like a lot of old floppy drives I've seen. I tried looking for some adapters and such to see if I could run an HDD through the computer's parallel or serial ports on the back but I couldn't find anything on that either, so I'm sort of stuck as to what I'm supposed to do.
I ran a little test in DOSBOX and I confirmed that I could install games to a floppy instead of an HDD and run them from that, but I'm limited to 720kb as I'm 99% sure the laptop's floppy drives don't recognise 1.44mb disks (I tried so many times to boot 1.44mb IBM PC DOS 2HD disks I had made, and none of them worked, but when I formatted a 2DD disk to 720kb and put a >1.44mb IBM PC DOS 3.30 image on there it booted just fine. I also tried formatting a 2HD disk to 720kb with a DOS 3.30 image but it didn't boot in the laptop). Another option would be to put a 1.44mb drive in the computer that has a 34-pin connector just like its original drives, but then I still wouldn't be able to run a lot of games that require more space to be installed.
Any suggestions at all? I'm posting this pretty late and I'm tired as all hell, so if this post isn't the most coherent thing in the world then please don't hold it against me :p