dell latitude c400 question

specifically .
what connector or cable i need to buy to force the laptop
to read from a optical drive
( since it has no built in drive )
tried linux and vista ( simple install )
but it will only boot for 5 seconds then stop completely

i am stumped

Do you not have the external drive and cable that came with it? Those machines use the pretty common modular hot-swap drives (same as those in most Dell laptops from that time period), but on the C400 they're connected by a special cable through that weird-looking wide port on the back of the machine. AFAIK, that cable is specific only to the C400, and there is no other way to boot from a floppy/optical drive without it.

Luckily, there's a couple of those cables on eBay at the moment, and they're not that expensive. (Under $20 at current.) Just search "C400 media cable." Once you have that, any drive that fits a Latitude C-series will work. Get one that looks like this. (Link is intended for illustrative purposes only.) It can be a CD-Rom, CD-RW, DVD, floppy, Zip, whatever, as long as it uses that form factor.

thank-you very much

i will see if there is a dell service center nearby me