[ale] Ask Mr. RetroScience: PCMCIA I?/II?/III?

[Raylynn Knight]

On Mon, 2004-10-18 at 22:52, John Mills wrote:
> Gurus and Guresses -
> 
> I came home with a D-Link model DWL-650, 802.11b PC Card Adapter (i.e,
> wireless NIC) for a "PC Card Type II" slot in a ">= 300MHz Pentium" laptop
> [it says on the box].
> 
> Ultra cheap if purchased in combination with its sibling 802.11b router, 
> which also came home with me.
> 
> 1. I checked Toshiba's specs for my Satellite Pro 430CDT and it says:  
> 2 at CardBus Type III slots. My innocent guess is the Type II card should be
> OK in a Type III slot - is that correct?
> 

Is it a CardBus (i.e 32 bit card) or a PCMCIA (ie. 16 bit card).  That
may be more relevant.

> 2. My little road warrior is only 100 MHz (F00F bug and all). I assume is
> I can ignore the ">= 300 MHz" requirement, except maybe for it limiting
> transfer speeds. Does that seem reasonable?
> 

Most likely your Toshiba has PCMCIA (16 bit) slots not CardBus.  In
which case you don't want to try to force the card into the slot.

> 3. The Wireless HOW-TO seems to suggest that D-Link uses a common chip
> with a Linux driver (prism??? something). Anyone using this card in a
> Linux setup?
> 
> FWIW, it's a fairly tight Slackware 9.1 installation. (Gotta be, in 1.2GB
> drive!) Thrashes along, but generally goes where I point it (if there
> isn't too much headwind).
> 
> TIA for clearing up the FUD.
>