Wireless PCI Adapters on Old Machines?

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CobaltBlue

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Just gotten into the whole wireless thing. Got loads of old crappy pentium 1's lying about maybe even some 486's.

I just wanted to know if a brand new pci wireless card would cut it in an old pc. I look at the minimum requirements and most of the time they say Windows 98SE/ME/2000/XP. I know the first pentiums can run windows 98, but does that qualifiy to wireless smoothly?

I wasn't thinking 54g, just 11b. Also, what limitations would the older pci bus speeds present? I notice that the 54g netgear cards want pentium III class MINIMUM!!

Thankyou.

p.s. yeah yeah i should upgrade! The old pc's are only wanted for internet and e-mail access. Maybe some DOOM too!
 
Hi,
you should try a dongle on the old machines first. I recomend a "D-Link" DWL-122. This we have found very useful to try out on random PC's and YES, it even works on Mac's. It comes with easy install CD, an extension cable (USB) and works on USB 1.1 or 2.0. You could try www.aria.co.uk or www.novatech.com to obtain one of these. They are around £25. We bought 1 to try, then a further 3 to standardise our system.
Regards,
OMAG
 
Thanks for the reply.

One Problem. These machines don't even have USB ports. They run like 100Mhz - 300Mhz processors.
 
i agree with you, you should upgrade!

get a computer from somewhere like ebay for £50
 
You may be able to run PCI Wireless network cards on 200Mhz+ PCs, as I've seen old laptops use them at around this speed. I would only look at the 11Mbps speed cards for something that slow though.
 
I run a wireless network at home now, using 802.11b

Seems to run fine on my network server, aka. (IBM ThinkPad 380Z, 32mb Ram, 4GB HDD, Windows 98SE)

I have a MA111 plugged into it, there should be no problems running wireless on a WIN98SE machine with a new card and a old pc as long as you have the relevant drivers for the card.

Chris
 
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