First of all, I apologize if this is the wrong place for
this… If it is, could someone please give me a push in the
right direction?

Okay, I'm feeling exceptionally stupid here. A friend asked
me to REFORMAT her older laptop and reinstall Win98. I
carefully backed up all of her DATA, then formatted the
C drive. I have the Win98SE OS CD.

I had it set to boot with CD-ROM support, only now I'm
getting the message that it does not find a CD drive!
The CD-ROM drive is an external PCMCIA drive. I tried
installing the PCMCIA driver and the CD-ROM driver,
but the system still insists that there is no CD-ROM drive.
Apparently it is not seeing the PCMCIA slot..?

I have an old external parallel port CD drive, so I
thought I'd try that, but the system won't acknowledge
it either.

Can someone help an idiot? I really hate to tell my friend
that I'm too dumb to do this favor for her, and then give her
back a non-working laptop!  :-/

-----
Thanks!The laptop obviously don't see the PCMCIA or the Parellel port, is there anything you can modify in the bios? USUALLY an option to you set the bootup order, e.g. Hdd, floppy or CDRom. If it don't support CD bootup, here are your options:
1. install DOS and install the PCM driver to DOS for CD drive, then insert your Win98 CD to drive and instal windows, check your autoexec.bat and config.sys to make the CD ROM is installed.
2. Remove the HDD and place it to a laptop that supports CD ROM bootup and install your win98 from there, some driver will not be compatible unless the laptop is identical, but worth a try at least to you back to windows and you can sort out the TEETHING problems once in windows.

let me know how you got on.

CigarmanThank you so much for the reply, Cigarman!

Unfortunately, there appears to be another problem... and it's a baddie. When I first turn the wee beastie on, there's a messae "Press F1 for IBM BIOS utility".

Only problem is F1 doesn't work! The key appears to be broken.  

Is there any other way to get into the BIOS on a Thinkpad?Nope, that's it!  Okay..... now what? I don't have an extra laptop to move the HD to and that may not work anyway....

Please tell me I did not ruin my friend's Thinkpad!Do you have a floppy drive that you can get working?What is the exact model number etc of this Thinkpad?
If the parallel port CD unit is a "BackPack" from the now defunct Micro Solutions, you'll need [highlight]this driver[/highlight].

BackPack models supported:
 163550  Backpack 2x CD-ROM
 163700  Backpack 2x CD-ROM w/Sound
 164550  Backpack 4x CD-ROM
 164700  Backpack 4x CD-ROM w/Sound
 165550  Backpack 6x CD-ROM
 165700  Backpack 6x CD-ROM w/Sound
 166550  Backpack 8x CD-ROM
 166700  Backpack 8x CD-ROM w/Sound
 167550  Backpack 32x CD-ROM
 167700  Backpack 32x CD-ROM w/Sound
 
 180100  Backpack bantam
 180200  Backpack bantam w/Sound
 181100  Backpack bantam 24X
 181200  Backpack bantam 24x w/Sound
 181150  Backpack bantam 24x (No PC Card support in DOS)

 190100  Backpack cd-rewriter 2x2x6
 190120  Backpack cd-rewriter 4x2x6 (both controllers supported)
 190126  Backpack cd-rewriter 4x2x6
 190127  Backpack cd-rewriter 4x2x8
 190130  Backpack cd-rewriter 4x4x20
 191100  Backpack cd-rewriter 4x4x20 (No PC Card support in DOS)

 170550  Backpack pd/cd (PD Cartridge in DOS requires BPPDDRV.SYS)
 170700  Backpack pd/cd w/Sound (PD Cartridge/DOS requires BPPDDRV.SYS)[size=12]The thinkpad is a 570. The floppy drive does show up.[/size]