So my boss gave me an old laptop to re-purpose. It is a Compaq Contura 430c and it is running windows 95a sp1 (I updated it through floppy yikes). Everything works like a dream on it, it is actually pretty fast, also I went to an old computer tech guy and he had hundreds of old floppy disks he was just about to take to recycling that he gave to me for free that had some great software on them. I also upgraded the ram to 24mb. I really like this laptop.
The problem is I am unsure if the pcmcia slots still work, taking it apart and giving a visual inspection they look great. However the two networking Ethernet cards do not seem to work. one is a startech eu1205cb and the other is a gigafast EE102-DLX. I have the drivers for both and they are both windows 95 compatible. The startech was plugged into another laptop and the lights came on, it was running xp, I could not test the gigafast. I tried all the available drivers that I found and all said the the device could not be found except one, one for the startech says the device is disabled in the device manager. The lights never came on on either card. There is no new hardware found pop up when the cards are plugged in either. Also from the control panel when I click on the pcmcia slots it says they are both empty but does not give any error about them, it says they are functioning.
The other problem is that NDIS2 also shows that it has a problem as well though no error message is given except in device manager, it is NDIS2.1. It is my understanding that these drivers use NDIS or ODI. I tried installing the ODI drivers from "add new hardware" but it asks for a disk I do not have although I do have a netware 1.4 disk and tried to use that for the files it was looking for, but then the laptop would go into a bootloop, solved by going into safemode and deleting the driver.
I have tried installing the drivers in DOS where I could (not fluent in DOS) and also in windows 95. The closest I got was setting up LVM? I think it is called, not sure but got lost in setting up the stuff and answering questions it asked.
Thank you in advance for any assistance you may be able to give, I am fluent in Linux but not so much in windows or DOS.
The problem is I am unsure if the pcmcia slots still work, taking it apart and giving a visual inspection they look great. However the two networking Ethernet cards do not seem to work. one is a startech eu1205cb and the other is a gigafast EE102-DLX. I have the drivers for both and they are both windows 95 compatible. The startech was plugged into another laptop and the lights came on, it was running xp, I could not test the gigafast. I tried all the available drivers that I found and all said the the device could not be found except one, one for the startech says the device is disabled in the device manager. The lights never came on on either card. There is no new hardware found pop up when the cards are plugged in either. Also from the control panel when I click on the pcmcia slots it says they are both empty but does not give any error about them, it says they are functioning.
The other problem is that NDIS2 also shows that it has a problem as well though no error message is given except in device manager, it is NDIS2.1. It is my understanding that these drivers use NDIS or ODI. I tried installing the ODI drivers from "add new hardware" but it asks for a disk I do not have although I do have a netware 1.4 disk and tried to use that for the files it was looking for, but then the laptop would go into a bootloop, solved by going into safemode and deleting the driver.
I have tried installing the drivers in DOS where I could (not fluent in DOS) and also in windows 95. The closest I got was setting up LVM? I think it is called, not sure but got lost in setting up the stuff and answering questions it asked.
Thank you in advance for any assistance you may be able to give, I am fluent in Linux but not so much in windows or DOS.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram