Upgrading an old laptop with a NIC card

News

CES '09: Asus' 512GB SSD Laptop; World First

We had the chance to briefly talk to Asus tonight, prior to CES' full opening in the morning. One thing we learned from Asus is that the company is preparing to launch what it claims is the world's first 512 GB SSD ultra-portable. Read more

Tom's to Transition to All Apple News

We at Tom's Hardware have been covering hardware and technology from all aspects of the industry for years. However, there was always one big gap. Read more

Core i7 Laptop Maker Talks to Us About Merits

Intel's Core i7 is one of the most innovative CPU releases to date. It's fast, efficient, and cutting edge. The thing about cutting edge though, is that you'll often pay a premium to gain access. Read more

Laptop Hunters Episode 4: $2,000 for Video Editing

Another Microsoft commercial, another PC notebook sold. Read more

Latest Reviews & Articles

Cryostasis: From Russia, With An Appetite For Fast Hardware

We recently had the chance to play a bit of Cryostasis, the latest title supporting Nvidia's PhysX technology. In fact, we played the game on five different hardware configurations. Want to play this one? We'll tell you what you need in order to enjoy it. Read more

Hard Drives, Yesterday And Today: From 500 GB To 1.5 TB

Hard drive capacities have increased in large increments over the last few years, while trends indicate reduced spindle speeds of 5,400 RPM instead of 7,200. We looked at three generations of Samsung hard drives to analyze the performance ramifications. Read more

Best Graphics Cards For The Money: June '09

This month, ATI's new Radeon HD 4770 is missing in action, since online stores are not only unable to keep it in stock, but also de-listing it completely. With violent movements in pricing, though, it'd have been taken off the recommended list anyway. Read more

Editor's Corner: Nvidia’s Ion Revisited, 7.1 Ch. LPCM Fixed

Nvidia's Ion for the do-it-yourselfer launched last month in the form of Zotac's mini-ITX motherboard. Though sexy in principle, the platform had some teething pains right out of the gate. Chris Angelini revisits those issues and uses Ion as a real HTPC. Read more

All the Reviews & Articles

Tom's Hardware > Forum > CPU & Components > Network Interface Cards > Upgrading an old laptop with a NIC card

Upgrading an old laptop with a NIC card

Tom's Hardware: Over 1.4 million members in 6 different countries available to answer all your high-tech questions. Sign up now! Its free!

Add a reply

Bottom Search this thread

I just got an old laptop from a friend, all I need it for is to access the internet for some information I may need to google at times in my office. It is a beast, an old Dell Inspiron 3700.

It has a slot on the side that you can slide a 56/K modem into, but does not have any ports for an ethernet type cable.

I called dell and they said that there is a card that would slide into this slot, but allow me to accept a ethernet type cable on the laptop soI can access my high speed internet.

any ideas where I can find this card. The part number he gave me (From Dell) was #0213P.

Thanks for the help!

Add a reply

Sounds like you need a PCMIA NIC card. They average about $30 retail.

Reply to runswindows95

I found this list of items, they seem to match what you said. Is this what I am looking for?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] et+Adapter

Reply to Carolen

Ok I have made a bunch of phone calls, and for one I will say DO NOT CALL LINKSYS their tech support is WORTHLESS.

But now that that rant is out of the way, I think I want this adapter. Can anyone confirm or deny that it should work in my laptop?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6839124002

This says it is a PCMCIA card, which is what I want.

The card I currently have (my 56K modem) is from Hawking Electronics and it is part number : PN612 HBMT if that helps any of you doing research to help me out.

Reply to Carolen

That would indeed be what you are looking for. Slide into the same place the modem would/does

------------------------------ "This thread made me strap on my lolerskates and head for my roflcopter."
Reply to chookman

I have a new problem with this whole scenario.

I bought the card, got it to connect and it worked great. However we recently CHANGED the HUB and DSL Modem in the office. So I have a new wireless signal, the old wireless hub we had is gone.

My laptop internet will not work. The program that came with the laptop does detect the new signal, and even says it is connected. But when I open my internet explorer it says there is no connection and asks if I want to work offline....

I am using Windows 98 (I know I know, it was free, what can I say!) PLEASE help!??

Reply to Carolen

Did you reconfigure your wireless card for the new router?

Reply to runswindows95

You have an old laptop, with No ethernet port and No wifi.

Your link above shows that you got a cat5e ethernet pcmcia card.

Why did you not just buy a pcmcia-wifi-card in the first place if your workplace have cat5e outlets but ALSO wifi.

$16.24
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6833156140

Reply to tonyp12

Yeah I don't understand why you didn't buy a wifi card.

Or do you connect to a router/hub by cable which then connects to a wireless router?

I think Carolen is confused, and means "wired" whenever she writes "wireless".
Carolen: you need to configure the settings on your laptop for the new internet connection (likely new "DNS server addresses", "DHCP server address" and "default gateway address" ). The software that came with your ethernet card may provide an easy way to do this; I would try uninstalling that software (perhaps using the Control Panel's Add/Remove Software - or whatever it is called in Win98), then install the software that came with the ethernet card again.

------------------------------ e2160@3GHz: OCing my way to Ubuntuland!
Reply to Mondoman

I am sorry, I made a mistake. I ended up deciding to buy a WIRELESS card instead of the one with the ethernet port, thats why everyone is wondering what I am talking about! So sorry!

I will try uninstalling then reinstalling the software that came with the card and then get back with you all. Thank you for the help! I really appreciate it!

Reply to Carolen

Ok I uninstalled and reinstalled the software, no dice.

The software I have is called "Level One" and I have a WPC-0500 MIMO Wireless Adapter.

The people at ATT (my ISP) said that my new DSL Modem/Router thing has password protection on the wireless internet. She told me the name and password to use. What I am doing is opening the software (LevelOne) and it sees my wireless connection is available. If I click on it and click "Connect" nothing happens. But If I double click the connection it opens a window that says "Authentication and Security".

On that window it says "Authentification Type" - Open. There is another drop down menu that talkes about the encryption Type (WEP). finally there is a set of 4 WEP Keys, I can pick one then enter a 10 charachter HEX key or 5 charachter ASCII. None of this seems right to me (but I have NO IDEA)...
However at the top there is a button that says "Use 802.1x" if I click that, it lets me into a window called "802.1x settings".

Here I can choose my Authernification type (PEAP, TLS/SmartCard, TTLS, Md5-Challenge) I can select my "Session Resumption" (Disabled, REauthenticate, Roaming, SamSsid, Always).

There is another section that says "Identity" and has a blank, I can enter my modems "Identity" given by ATT but the password part is grayed out and won't let me enter anything.

Then there is a thing that says "Tunneled Authentication" I have a drop menu labeled "Protocol" with the following choices (EAP-MSCHAP v2, EAP-TLS/SmartCard, Generic Token Card). Right next to this is a blank for "Identity" and another for "Password". If I enter the identity and password given to me by ATT it will "Connect" but when I open my internet it still will not open web pages. It seems to be saying something about looking for a DNS Server a lot on the bottom left where it usually says what page it is loading.

Does anyone follow any of this enough to help? Thank you in advance for your time everyone, I REALLY appreciate it!

Reply to Carolen

I have the same card on my old gateway laptop.

you should not have to play around with PEAP, TLS/SmartCard, TTLS, Md5-Challenge etc.

The company have a dsl modem and a wireless router after that.
The router is the one that logs in with username and password, not you.

That DSL logging-in part most already be working as other people can use the internet if the office.

Now it comes down to the wifi security the router is using.
Who set it up?, ATT or some manager at your job?

Do someone at your job have the username and password to log in to the router and look at what level of wep and keys it's using?

Or is a printed list available?

Double click on you level-one icon down at the right taskbar.
Change settings to the corect wep level, 64 or 128 bit etc.

Set the right key and make sure to know if the key is hex or ascII.

Message edited by tonyp12 on 03-14-2008 at 05:07:51 PM

Reply to tonyp12

I setup the modem and router myself (sigh)

I figured out that it is a 64 bit WEP (http://www.2wire.com/pages/pdfs/2701_installation_guide.pdf)
And I have the password, the 10 digit HEX password needed. I type it in, and the modem says its connected in the Level One's software....but my internet explorer still doesn't work.

To complicate matters, I have someone else in the office with a nice/newer laptop. She asked to use the internet, I said fine if you can get it to work. On her laptop she needed the password (the 10 digit HEX key) and she is now using the internet fine. So I know its working, its just something in my laptop....

Any more thoughts?..Anyone know about the details of Win98, I am wondering if it does not realize that its connected to the internet somehow?

Reply to Carolen

If you know the URL, admin login and password for configuring the wireless router (in fact, even without the login and password because it will tell you authentication failed; the URL is usually something like "http://192.168.1.1/" if it hasn't been changed from the default), you can check to see whether your laptop is "talking" to the router. If you get a login popup when you go to that URL, then your computer can connect to your router.

If your computer cannot talk to the router, then the most likely scenarios are that either (a) you have the wrong Wifi configuration (your WEP settings), or (b) you have an incompatible wifi card (e.g. a "b-g-m" card trying to access an "a" access point). I find that with heterogeneous WEP or WAP hardware, I usually have to type in the hexadecimal characters (e.g. "A4E6DD8792", with no hyphens or spaces) instead of the passcode, because different driver software from different vendors will transform the passcodes into different strings. So see if you can get the hex string from someone, and type that in instead of the passcode when you configure your wifi.

If your laptop is connecting to the router, then it may be a DNS lookup problem (e.g. your Internet Explorer is trying to find "www.tomshardware.com", but doesn't know what computer to ask to figure out that Tom's is at 208.48.161.101, so it can't reach it). On Windows XP, the DOS command to figure out your IP settings is "ipconfig /all". I don't remember if that works on Win 98 or not but you can try that in an MS-DOS window. Look for lines that say "DNS Servers . . . . . . . . #.#.#.#", where the #s are between 0 and 255. Also you can check your IP address. If it looks like "169.254.xxx.xxx", then you haven't gotten a valid IP address and you'll need to talk to the person who manages the router about that.

------------------------------ Pentium D 940 w/XP90C
D955XBK,2 x 1 GB PC5300 @ 4-4-4-12
HIS HD2600XT
4 x 400 GB WD4000YR RE2 (1TB RAID5, 125GB RAID0)
Reply to TeraMedia

Try to reset your internet explorer lan setting.

Tools -> Internet options -> Connections -> setup.

Select manual, select connection that is always on with no password needed.

Message edited by tonyp12 on 03-14-2008 at 08:05:52 PM

Reply to tonyp12

Ok I am not getting too excited yet, but today when I turned my laptop on to address these latest ideas....I had internet.... It worked with no problems.

I tried to do the "reset my IE LAN Settings" idea. But when I do all of that and click Setup, it says it cannot load the internet connection helper wizard.

Thanks for all of your help so far everyone. I think I may have caught a lucky break, and fixed my internet with your help!

Reply to Carolen

I just wanted to thank everyone who posted on here and dealt with my "lack of understanding" of all of this. I have been using the laptop since my last post (one week) and it has been working fine. I am not really certain what happened, but it does work now!

Thank you "RunsWindows95", "Chookman", "Tonyp12", "_Visual", "MondoMan", and "TeraMedia", for all of your help.

Reply to Carolen

Ask the community Add a reply

Tom's Hardware > Forum > CPU & Components > Network Interface Cards > Upgrading an old laptop with a NIC card

Go to:

Help |
Forum rules

There are 1210 identified and unidentified users. To see the list of identified users, Click here.

Page generated in 0.263 seconds

Please mind

You are about to answer a thread that has been inactive for more than 6 months.
If you still wish to proceed, please ensure that your posting is original and does not duplicate or overlap any prior responses to this thread.

Add a reply Cancel

Focus On

Related Topics

News

Latest Reviews & Articles

Upgrading an old laptop with a NIC card

Please mind