Overambitious? - 2005 toshiba 2.5" laptop hdd into 1995 AST desktop

I am wondering if this is a little overambitious.

Am trying to fit a 2005 toshiba 2.5" IDE 40GB laptop hdd into a 1995 AST 812 desktop. The original 3.5" IDE HDD was only 850 MB!

I bought a 2.5" HDD adapter yesterday and had to pull one of the pins out (I'm not sure if this is right or I should buy one which has 39 pins and has been correctly constructed - or a waste of my money...).

Got into the BIOS and says that Primary IDE Master & Slave and Secondary IDE Master & Slave not installed.

The disk has been completely reformatted, though I don't think this is the issue. Has anyone had any luck with a similar experiment?

Thanks.

Is it possible to install a PCI IDE Controller without a functioning HDD?

I haven't had luck with this motherboard.

I have put an ethernet adapter on it but most other things have failed, including trying to attach a USB adapter.

If it's built in 1995, will it be compatible with a new pci ide controller?

instead of connecting the hdd to the motherboard you would connect it to the pci card ( using the same cable). the motherboard would then redirect all requests for drive access to the card that the drive is connected to.

as for compatibility well its a 14 year old machine. im not gunna guarentee anything.

when you say most other things have failed can you elaborate on that. is windows just not recognizing it? does the "magic smoke" come out of the device? does the machine just fail to turn back on?...