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I have an old Toshiba Satellite Pro T2150CDT laptop and want to make it useful instead of letting it continue to collect dust. I have run into a rather large problem I cannot seem to get around. Since I want to use this laptop as a primitive test subject for my programming I need to get it up and running again. I cannot find out how to get into the BIOS or boot menu during loadup to get it to load from a CD and I cannot get a HDD to work because it hasn't an FDD. Is there any suggestions on how to get at least a basic DOS setup on the HDD?

Take the HDD out and put it into another system, preferably one with similar chipsets. You can use that system (that will boot from CD) to install FreeDOS, GNU/Linux, or even Windows (though Windows won't work brilliantly as it customises the installation for specific drivers... and hence won't boot correctly on different chipsets).

2.5" to 3.5" IDE adapters are readily available (cost about $10AU), and they work fine. You just have to be careful about which way around you plug in the drive to the adapter... you can fry the drive if you're not careful.

If you still have the original system restore CD (if it came with one), even better. It'll even have the correct drivers.

I would have already done such except that this is an old laptop and I dont have anything even remotely similar. My other two computers are Mac OS X so I can format the drive with "MS-DOS file system" using the options I have on my computer but I have no FDDs period.

for the BIOS issue: http://www.roe.ac.uk/~hme/tosh4600/
just press escape on bootup.