I have a Toshiba Satellite laptop, circa 2002, with Windows 97 OS.  There is a DOS database program that I would like to access however when I attempt to boot up, I get the message, System Disc required.  How can I obtain such a disc?To avoid overwriting data on the drive, you could always carefully remove the drive from laptop and install it into a external hard drive case for 3.5" drives. You will have to see if its a SATA or PATA hard drive. When its removed if it has a BUNCH of gold pins then its a IDE aka PATA drive. Installing the drive into this case that matches you can then connect it to USB port of a newer healthy computer and be ABLE to access your data through a modern healthy computer. Only issue with the DOS Database would be if its too old to run on Windows 10 because Windows 10 no longer supports 16-bit programs. However I think you could copy it to a DOSBOX environment and run it from there on Windows 10 if your running Windows 10 on current computer.

If you WANT to get the laptop back up and running finding the system recovery disc for this build might be tricky and if found would come at a COST. Given its age I very much doubt that Toshiba would be able to assist with this. You might be able to find a matching system recovery disc on ebay used for sale but you will want to make sure its exactly the one needed for your computer so that the drivers on it pair up properly to the hardware that requires the drivers.

Myself, I would go route of extracting the drive and installing it into proper empty external hard drive case and access it through a modern computers USB port.