The C series notebooks do not support booting from an external device.  There is no version of the BIOS that supports that.

 

Sorry.  I know this is not what you wanted to here.

 

You can use a 2nd Harddrive Module in the Modular Bay, but it will leave you without a CDROM.  A C/Dock II would give you an extra modular Bay  for the CDROM and a Floppy Parallel Port cable would also let you connect a Floppy drive. I did this once with a CPiA and it worked fine, but your laptop use with both OS would be limited.

Doesn't the C840 have a fixed optical drive in addition to whatever is in the modular bay(s)?

Sorry about the mistake; I read c640 from C840 in errror

Here you go. This is the cheapest I could find on Ebay

http://cgi.ebay.com/2nd-Hard-Drive-Module-Dell-Latitude-CPi-CPx-C600-603ny_W0QQitemZ180079494652QQihZ008QQcategoryZ74949QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

 

Inspiron 8200
2.0mhz Pentium 4-M
1024mb PC2100 DDR SDRAM
40gb Hitachi 7200rpm-HTE726040M9AT00-UDMA5
Pioneer DVR-K05 DVD-RW in Fixed Optical Bay
LS-120 SuperFloppy in ModularBay
Windows XP Pro SP2
I8kFanGui 2.20
nVidia 32mb GeForce 2 Go Video Card
15" UXGA LCD

Hi,

 

For anyone trying to use the floppy on the printer port, this does not work on this model. The C8XX does not support it.

 

                                                                                      Regards Chris

Also true for the Inspiron 8000/8100/8200, Chris. Additionally, the LS120 Super Floppy does not work on the Parallel Cable even on models which do support it.

Great to see people out there still using thei i8200/c840 notebooks.

 

Personally, I want to try to install/run Vista on it :)

The LS120 drive will not work on the parallel cable because it uses an IDE port and not a floppy port.