I have an older Toshiba laptop computer, Satellite Pro 405CS, that I
would like to connect to our network via 802.11b wireless.  It has
been upgraded to W98SE.  I have available a D-LINK wireless adaptor,
DWL-G650, which I have installed in the PCMCIA slot.  I had installed
the D-LINK software first, as instructed.

The Toshiba does not see the G650 card at all.  I am aware that the
system requirements for the G650 is a cpu of 500mhz, but is this
enough to stop the card from working?  Is this card incompatible with
the Toshiba?  Is there another brand/type/style of 802.11b card that
will work with this laptop?  If this is an impossible situation,
please say so, and I will quit working on it.

The Toshiba 405CS is a 75mhz cpu with 24 meg RAM.

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Clarification of Question by shortcircuit-ga on 23 Sep 2003 08:36 PDT

This laptop has 2 PCMCIA slots.  One of the slots is occupied by a 56k
modem card, which works perfectly.  I tried inserting the wireless
card into both slots, but it never shows up.

I do not have another laptop handy to verify that the wireless card is
working properly, but I might be able to borrow one later this week.

I am not expecting this laptop to be a powerhouse machine.  I mainly
use it for terminal emulation using either hyperterminal or telnet.

shortcircuit-ga:

Thank you for your question about the problems you have encountered
trying to set up a wireless networking adapter in your Toshiba
Satellite Pro 405CS.

I have good news, and I have bad news.

The bad news is that the DWL-G650 card is a 32-bit CardBus card, while
the PCCard slots in the Toshiba Satellite Pro 405CS are 16-bit PCMCIA
slots. The Satellite Pro 400 series was designed in 1995, just before
the CardBus interface came out in 1996. That is why the laptop will
not even see the DWL-G650.

The good news is that you should still be able to find an 802.11b
PCMCIA card (16-bit) that should be able to work in that laptop, as
long as the W98SE is installed properly such that it has proper and
complete control of the PCMCIA slots (ie. not using a work-around
involving a Toshiba application). Since you mention that you already
use a 56k modem card in the PCMCIA slots, I suspect that you should be
fine.

Now for a little more bad news... while 802.11b PCMCIA cards (16-bit)
should be easy to find, your mileage may vary. One example is:

TigerDirect.ca - Gigafast WF721-AEX

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=590682&Sku=G300-1070%20P

You may be able to find something at your local surplus computer store
for a better overall price.

A visual method to differentiate between CardBus and PCMCIA is the
distinctive "gold" coloured strip on the top surface at the connector
end of the card.

Unfortunately, without knowing all of the peculiarities of your
laptop, I cannot guarantee that any particular PCMCIA Wi-Fi card will
work, but I am fairly confident that it will. You may run into some
problems running the wireless utility that comes with the card, as not
all such utilities are written efficiently. If you do run into such
problems, consider trying the following in order to confirm that the
card indeed works:

Cirond WiNc 1.3 (trial version)
http://www.cirond.com/site/products/soho/download_software.htm 



I hope that this answers your question... in short, there is still
hope. If you do not feel that this is sufficient, please let me know
so that I can provide clarification.

Regards,

aht-ga

Excellent answer.  This is exactly the information that I was looking
for.  I will order the Gigafast card and give it a try.  I have also
bookmarked the software utility that you mention in case I need it
later.  Thank you very much.

I can almost guarantee you that a 75mhz/24 meg RAM box is not going to
run that wireless card. Thats barely enough to run windoze 98.

Malachite-ga is probably correct.  But before giving up, I would try
using the card in another computer to make sure the card isn't
defective, and I'd try putting another device in the slot to make sure
the slot isn't defective.