Workaround for Sony proprietary CD-ROM please

[TheCorsairMalack]

I bought a sony pcg-505tx laptop and I don't have the proprietary Sony cd-rom drive that fits it. It's running windows 98 and doesn't have the drivers for USB media. So I tried getting a 2.5 to 3.5 hard drive adapter. The drive wouldn't work in a desktop. It brings up a "VFAT unable to continue loading..." error, and when set to slave, the drive still works at the same time as the other drive. It manages to bring up the VFAT error no matter how I have it attached.

Is this a proprietary Sony thing? Does someone know a workaround? I'd really appreciate it.