i have an older laptop that i want to hook to my wireless netwok    i
have a newer pc card   cardbus type  but it does not seem to work   i
have a presario 1650 with 98 se installed    any ideas

The Linksys WUSB12 may work. It's an external USB wireless adapter
that works with windows 98 SE, windows 2000, ME and XP.
For more info follow the url below

http://www.linksys.com/products/product.asp?grid=33&scid=36&prid=519

It's usually a software problem, specifically, that Windows 98 does
not have the correct drivers for that card.

Two things to make sure of:

1. That the Compaq native drivers and firmware are as up to date as
they can be (Especially the ROMPaq.)

See: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareList?dlc=en&lc=en&product=95217&lang=en&cc=us&os=20

2. That the manufacturer of the CardBus style NIC (Network Interface
Card) that you bought does not have special Win98 drivers available
for it.  Most newer cards and peripherals have native XP support, but
might require a download from the manufacturer for older operating
systems like Win 98.

For what it's worth, my father recently found out the hard way that PC
Card (PCMCIA) and CardBus are two different things.

http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/if/sfPCMCIA.html

His dinosaur IBM laptop used the older 16-bit PC Card standard, and
the newer 32-bit CardBus cards, (*almost* identical, physically, ) do
not fit into the older slots.

Good luck...

Older laptops (like I have), do not have USB or CARDBUS. If youo need
a Type II or TYPE II PCMCIA card, the Linksys WPC-11 is 802.11b
standard of up to 11Mbps. You can currently get it from Linksys.com or
possibly a linksys dealer. It comes with a CD ROM for Windows 98 and
you can even download from Linksys a Windows 95 driver. It does
require a 200Mhz processor, which means if you have a

For Online manuals for the 1650 Persario, including wireless networking, see  
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/manualCategory?product=95217&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&lang=en&cc=us

Older laptops usually need a 16bit wireless PCMCIA card instead of a 32bit one. 

They can usually be found on ebay very cheap.