Was there a specific Outbound disk tool? I don't remember one, but it's been a long time. Don't know why you couldn't use Lido or similar.
I don't think there was. However, after installing the System one needed to run the Outbound Installer utility.
I remember being able to run that with the Outbound installer on a disk connected by LocalTalk. So you might try running it on your Silicon drive.
How would that help?
Well, your hard drive is not showing up for one of two reasons. Either there's a hardware problem -- failed/disconnected hard drive, or the Laptop doesn't know about the hard drive for some reason. The installer seems to autodetect internal floppy vs internal hard drive and the size of the hard drive. Then for just a moment it flashes up this message, "Writing to EEPROMs" or something like that. So running the installer might tell the laptop about the hard drive.
There are a couple of 64Kbit EEPROMs on the Outbound motherboard that store oddball non-Mac settings. They get written when that installer runs -- at least for some settings.
Again, IIRC, the CP2064 and CP2084 are supported drives. The Laptop only supports 20, 40, 60, and 80 MB drives. You can't use just any IDE drive.
I've seen some of those models in which the gasket between the casing halves had turned to goo. Others are fine.
Most folks don't remember, but in the old days, computers didn't autodetect the hard drive parameters. They had to be entered into the Setup (CMOS) settings by hand. If you knew what you were doing, you changed the settings with the drive sitting on the desk next to you (settings printed on drive label) and then installed the drive. If you were everyone else, you installed the drive and then discovered you needed the info off the label to get it to work.
Point is, as far as I can guess, the Laptop 125 only supports certain sets of hard drive parameters.
There was a guy who was going to try to hack in support for other drives, but I never heard anything further from him. That was back in the 90s.