[geeks] Wireless PC Cards - possible?

[Phil Stracchino]

Micah R Ledbetter wrote:
> I've acquired for free a Compaq LTE 5150 laptop (100MHz Pentium, heh) and docking station.

My sympathies.

> I'd like to take it wireless, but I've read that this machine can't handle the CardBus PCMCIA cards, and requires PC Card PCMCIA cards... the way I understand it, PC Card was first, and CardBus was a later standard that was more like PCI.

That's correct.  PCMCIA is a 16-bit interface that can be compared to 
ISA-on-a-card, CardBus is a 32-bit PCI-like interface.  Now Cardbus in 
turn is about to be replaced by a new card standard, faster, lower 
power, and half the width -- two of the new slots will occupy the space 
of one Type I/II CardBus slot.

> I've seen conflicting reports on the web. Reports of people turning these things into wireless access points, as well as reports stating that there is no wireless card that will work in this machine. Can anyone shed some light on this for me? Anyone gone wireless in a non-CardBus laptop, or researched it and found it to be impossible?

My CardBus Thinkpad 600E has enough difficulty.  Under Windows 2000 at 
least, plugging in a Linksys or Netgear 802.11g card brings it to its knees.


-- 
  Phil Stracchino
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