NT4 and Wi-Fi PCMCIA

[no1none]

My friend got an old laptop 133MHz / 48MB RAM.

It was painfully slow on Win98, and it crashed few times a day too.

All she use it for is to read ebooks in bed, and listen to music, so I loaded old NT4 on it, and it work fast and stable for almost a month without a single crash (and she doesn't even turn it off, simply closes it and it goes into standby).

BUT

I just spent 2 hours trying to install her wifi card and Im stuck.

I can't install any other card I have instead, because that old laptop has only 16-bit PCMCIA slots and my cards are 32-bit.

The card is D-Link DWL-650.

I can't find NT drivers for it.

Installation from CD goes fine, installs ANIO and ANIWZCS services, and D-Link Air Utility.

PCMCIAsees the card in socket 0 properly, but no drivers are installed (unknown.sys).

Device status - No data base entry for this card.

I found the NT4 driver for Intersil Prism 2 card from D-Link Australia site, which is supposedly the same card, I can add it and remove in Network/Adapters, but apparently Windows reads the card's hardware id and it doesnt use this drivers (Intersil Prism Wireless PC Card) for D-Link DWL-650 or else.

What am I doing wrong?

I installed WMI for NT, Visual C++ libraries, etc. libraries already (learned the 'hardway' of off the errors popping up until i eliminated them all hehe), but maybe Im still missing something I couldnt think off?

Any help/input greatly appreciated

/edit/ laptop doesnt have usb, modem or other built-in NIC, so this wifi card is the only way to load music & ebooks on it, and my friend dont want to go back to Win98 anymore LOL

Edited May 27, 2007 by no1none

[jaclaz]

NT4 came with NO native CardBus (32 bit PCMCIA) support anyway.

There used to be commercial third party Cardbus drivers/stacks, I guess that they are all discontinued by now, but since you don't have the hardware, that's allright.

48 Mbyte of memory seems a bit under-powered to me for NT 4.00:

http://www.msfn.org/board/OS_laptop_t55146.html&st=5

that kind of machines usually had windows 95 on them.

Back to your problem:

What am I doing wrong?

Most probably nothing, but, once said that it is of course not recommended/possibly not working using driver files made for other devices, if you are positive that the card is the same or "nearly" the same, a possible path could be:

1) Get the Win2K drivers for your card

2) Get the Win2K drivers for the "other" card

3) Get the NT4.00 drivers for the "other" card

Compare the .inf files of #2 against #1.

With some common sense (and a bit of luck) you can find what changes between #2 and #1 can be "translated" into a hacked #3 .inf file, with some more luck it will even work .

If there is nothing of note in the .inf files, it is possible that there is something in the actual binaries, this might prove to be more difficult to find, but the above hinted method should apply as well.

I haven't checked, but if I am not mistaken the D-Link DWL-650 came in several releases, possibly with different versions of the Prism chip, you sure about that one you found using the same one?

To find some "similar" cards, you may refer to the Linux list of "supported" PCMCIA/Cardbus:

http://pcmcia-cs.sourceforge.net/ftp/SUPPORTED.CARDS

(cards that use the same driver should have the same or however compatible chipset)

Or, better yet, this one where chipset info for each card is clearly available:

http://www.linux-wlan.org/docs/wlan_adapters.html.gz

jaclaz

[no1none]

jaclaz, you are right about different version of this card model.

I found mine to be revision P1, while the drivers for NT4 that I found are for revision A - however those drivers are not listed as NT drivers on dlink site either (none of the cards has any mention of NT driver compatibility at all), I used them only after I found some post on one of the million boards I read earlier that this 98-ME-2K driver in particular is for NT4 as well (and indeed it displays nice "D-Link Wireless 11Mbit drivers for Windows NT" message when installing and has a very well described step by step info just for NT4 in ReadMe).

God how I hate this laptop already Its CD drive doesn't read CD-RWs (thank god it is able to read CD-Rs at least LOL) and of course I didn't have any blank CD-Rs (and its a CD-only, not a CD-DVD combo), so I had no other way to transfer any files to this junk but to set up direct connection with my computer; took me good half an hour to solder DB-9 connectors and setup null modems, and to transfer the drivers painfully slow from my computer to that laptop just to learn its not for this card, thanks god I don't have any hammer at hand or I'd really use it on this piece oif crap I can't believe people could design such "deaf'n'blind" portable computer without built-in modem, or ethernet, or infrared at least I can imagine wifi was probably very expensive back then to include, but god - not even an infrared?! Shame on Acer engineers

/edit/ sorry for the rant, but I m so p***ed.

Im going to repartition the drive, install 98 on second part just to have wifi working there, and install NT on the other partition so she could use it 'normally' (without crashes) for now. In the meantime Im going to search for some old used 16-bit wifi card with NT drivers for $5 or less

Edited May 27, 2007 by no1none

[no1none]

Just an update

Since the old 16-bit wifi cards working on NT4 are hard to find, and once found (ie on ebay) their owner are crazy about them ($25 for a 7 years old slow wifi card?! LOL gimme a break ) I did what I think is the best solution: I made a 'custom' Windows 2000 VeryLight version (everything stripped away and removed down to the level of NT4 but with all the updates etc) and instead of wasting $20+ on some old stinky wifi card I spent $5 instead and bought old 64MB SoDIMM RAM and installed this VeryLight W2K.

It purrs same as NT4 did, but has plug'n'play support, and of course it comes with hibernation working (as any W2K would) and so on and on

The footprint is just 36MB and 0.03-1% when windoze is running on its own, 460 MB of the hdd space. Not bad IMHO (edit: thats with other basic software such winrar, k-meleon browser, adobe reader, and some extras that i know this person needs - .net framework 1.1, java, etc etc).

WIth total of 98MB RAM now it runs with NOD32 pretty good, it is responsive fast enough too (had to get rid of all the window animations and such since there is only 1MB of video memory). Memory footprint is au-pair with what NT4 had (30-ish MB) it only take more space on hard disk (NT4 took what, 160-180 MB or so).

Im posting it as an advice to those who may be in same shoes - if you wanted NT4 on that old laptop because you didnt have enough RAM or CPU power, consider making your own Windows 2000 "light" version that will work same as NT4 just taking a bit more space on your hdd, but giving you advantages of plug'n'pray, hibernation (important on laptops IMHO) and others...

Heck, even Skype runs fine on this Pentium 133 MHz old junk (I just tested it with 802.11b D-Link DWL-650) (no video, just talk)

PS

How to make your own Windows 2000 "lite" version? search for nlite (but its not as good as doing it yourself; good starting guide for those who'd want to customize their W2K in every possible way should still be HERE

Edited June 4, 2007 by no1none

[jaclaz]

With all due respect, 460 Mb appears to me more like "Light Heavyweight" than "VeryLight" (I presume you are talking about the OS, without, say, Office, IE7, Photoshop or whatever big-sized application.

Speaking of Win2K, I would put "Extremely light" below 100 Mb, "Very Light" between 100 and 200, "Light" between 200 and 300, "Middleweight" between 300 and 400, "Light Heavyweight" between 400 and 500, and "Heavyweight" for anything bigger.

If I recall correctly, an "untouched" install of Win2K is about 600 Mb.

jaclaz

[no1none]

With all due respect, 460 Mb appears to me more like "Light Heavyweight" than "VeryLight" (I presume you are talking about the OS, without, say, Office, IE7, Photoshop or whatever big-sized application.

Speaking of Win2K, I would put "Extremely light" below 100 Mb, "Very Light" between 100 and 200, "Light" between 200 and 300, "Middleweight" between 300 and 400, "Light Heavyweight" between 400 and 500, and "Heavyweight" for anything bigger.

If I recall correctly, an "untouched" install of Win2K is about 600 Mb.

jaclaz

W2K with SP4 / IE6 / RUI1 / all updates integrated etc = 900 MB on hdd

I didnt actually check how much this 'light' version of mine would have had, because i added to install disc all toys that she may need and i made it completely autoinstalling (dont forget, its for a girl...), so yeah, the 460 MB does include other crap too; AFAIR just the Sun's Java gobbles up 100+ MB itself when installed... and other 'heavy weight' crap thats incorporated in this install is .NET1... so there you go, at least 200MB just for these two. ACrobat reader IIRC is another 50 MB if not more...

I guess you may be right, its not "VeryLight" as an installation, but as an OS I'm pretty sure it is, and it certainly would be well below 200 MB on its own.

On the other hand, there isn't much use for such light OS without anythin else. I guess I could play with it more and make it or at least try to make it fit on a miniCDR (50-60MB) but still it would be just a proof of concept, nothing useful, aka waste of time even if i would be succesful in doing so LOL