We were given a laptop computer with Win98 (FE) and someone else gave us a
PCMCIA wireless card.  We installed the driver package for that card and the
program runs but it does not detect a wireless signal at the library.  Do we
need to do something else in Windows to make it work?  Someone suggested we
had to set up networking.  We have never networked in Windows.

32 responses total.

Well, the wireless signal is layer 1. Setting up networking would be
layer 2 and 3. I doubt setting up TCP/IP is going to help in finding the
wireless signal.

Have you checked if the PCMCIA card and library are compatible? 802.11a? b?

I have no idea what a Windows layer is.  Are you saying we don't need to set
up networking for wireless networking?  The card is 802.11b, Linksys, and it
came with 16MB file for use with Win98, which installed itself, and if I click
on the name of that program it comes onscreen.  What else is needed?  The
neighbor who tried to help has not used wireless himself.  We are taking this
to tonight for help from a friend who has not used PCMCIA but has a DSL
connection in his house with wireless router (his landlady's, he has not used
it either).  He does use Windows.  

The layers don't belong to Windows, but refer to the ISO
Open Systems Interconnect (OSI) 7-layer networking model...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Systems_Interconnection

Perhaps the card needs an antenna connected?  It could also
be that you need to somehow enter a WEP or WPA key of some
sort in order to connect to (or even see?) the wireless LAN.

We entered a number given to us by the library.  I found instructions how to
set up wireless networking in Windows and followed them and we will see if
the card works at a friend's house.  I changed one setting.  Windows says
something about assigning things automatically, without mentioned DHCP.

Wireless networking in Windows 98 is not exactly the breeze it is in
Windows XP.

Which library are you trying to connect to?

Ann Arbor Public Library.  This does not work at a friend's house either. 
I read the pdf file - it needs Win98SE and we seem to have FE.  We have a 98SE
CD but it won't work to upgrade FE and the computer is all set up working with
a PDA and sound and Adobe etc. so I don't want to start over (I don't even
have the software to install, it was given to us like this).  Is there some
way to use a non-upgrade CD to upgrade?  (I would experiment first on our
other Win98FE computer).  

We have the option of putting a PCMCIA controller into the Win98SE desktop
computer, but I would prefer to just work on the linux drivers.  I found a
site about wireless networking that says you don't need WEP (which is in the
linux files), it gives you more security or something.  We don't need that
at the library to download a large file or two.  

We got the Yahoo Digital Camera working with Win98FE.  First I installed three
versions of the STV680 (0680) driver, and there was no hint as to how to use
the thing.  Ten files in windows\system starting with stv.  Maybe a USB
version would be detected but ours is serial.  A neighbor figured out you can
use Microsoft Photo Imaging to 'scan' the files in the camera.  It asked if
we wanted to use the HP scanner or the camera.  Someone must have put this
scanner stuff on before, but where does it come from normally?  You do a
'scan', it shows thumbnails, then you choose to download all or one.   Since
they are both marked with underlined A (all or camera) it downloads all of
them if you type Alt-A so I had to use the mouse.

The camera produced 100K gifs of about 300x250 pixels in single-image mode,
or 1/4 that size in 'video' mode (it beeps and keeps taking photos
continuously while you hold down the button).  It has .1MB internal memory.
You need to focus to the right and above what you want to take a photo of.
YOu can take pictures with thelight off using the four infrared LEDs and get
a really really bad quality monochrome picture, or get just a bad one with
room light.  It was reviewed online as a toy purchased for $60 at K-Mart. 
Someone else got one for $40 and it broke just after warranty expired but they
were told they could get it fixed anyway, for just $41 plus shipping.  

It is supposed to work in linux using the SANE package for scanners, with
'qcam' (which I compiled, but I think I deleted qcam since I had none of
those).

What is a webcam (video mode?) and how would we use it as one?

A friend just dropped off an upgrade disk from Win3.1 or Win95 to WinSE - will
it work with WinFE?

Re #6: If the library's wireless lan is set up using WEP,
  you would need WEP support to connect to it.

  I'm not sure a PC serial port webcam would be fast enough
  for continuous video.  The Macintosh serial ports were
  much faster (when externally clocked) and I don't think
  the few Mac serial QuickCams I saw could sustain 25 frames
  per second.  It was probably more like 10.  Back then that
  seemed quite impressive.

I have no idea how we would even set up the software to continuously transfer
the images from the camera as they were being taken.  That might require some
other program than Microsoft Photo Imaging.  Does 98 have quickcam software?
I have it for linux.

We tried to play a sound card through the midi piano (clavinova) but got no
sound.  FM synthesis is not playing in linux either - no idea why.  It works
in DOS on that computer.  I could try the AWE64 sound card, which does not
use FM synthesis either, but wavetables (it gets signals to play a piano sound
starting now, stopping, then at a specific volume).  I had to take it out when
we upgraded my regular computer to something without enough slots.

"Photo Imaging" sounds like the kind of program that deals
exclusively with still images.  What webcam software do you
use with Linux?

Do your sound card's FM synth and MIDI UART both show up in
your dmesg output? What are their device names?  Did Jim try
the cable that I suggested?

I got a genuine premade MIDI cable and he checked and it does not have
continuity, which suggests it contains the required optoisolator but it could
also be broken. I got four DOS midi players that play to Roland MPU-401
compatible devices (I hope my piano is that) and they also play silence.

Two of the programs had serious problems.  One crashed while unziping and the
other complained during the test setup that there was a memory problem. 
'memtest' no. 5 rejected both DIMMs.  They may be too fast for the board -
both 100MHz on an older 66MHz bus.  We have an 8MB to try next.  

I will get FM synthesis working in linux first - I think I need to do
something to get around the plug-n-play, such as set it up in DOS with CTCM.
Then work on DOS midi playing, maybe with a known good sound card that I had
to take out of my better computer when I upgraded it to something with only
2 ISA slots.  

We will take the Win98 laptop computer to the library again tomorrow.
Found a newer printer that works in Win98 but DOS only in black (which is
clogged, that is why they put it at the curb I think) and in linux only with
gimp-print which is a 5MB download and I think would require recompiling
ghostscript to use it.  Jim is going to try forcing air or liquid through the
clogged nozzle with a syringe.  Windows printed at 94% default but I could
set it to 200 or 400% instead, which gives 1:1 or 1:2 ratio of pixel to
printed dot and looked okay except my hair was light orange and white. 
Ghostscript I think would print at whatever produced a full page - is there
some way to set to 1:1 ratio?  printgf for DOS is easy to adjust but the idiot
printer won't work in DOS, or in linux with normal Epson driver.  I could
install Slackware 10.2 to use gimp-print but it is even bigger than Win98.

Jim fixed the laser printer again.  First he replace the shiny main subpad
with something rubbery and instead of feeding all the sheets it fed none. 
I read him the instructions about 2 auxiliary pads, which he insisted were
not there.  Eventually they materialized and he cleaned them (roughed them
up) and replaced the two pieces of the originally-one-piece main pad with the
slippery material again, and it feeds single sheets.  Last three fixes lasted
no more than 10 sheets.  After this he can try replacing those pads.

In the meantime a friend returned the Okidata that does feed properly but has
2MB RAM so won't print 600 dpi graphics, which needs about 6MB RAM.  It should
work for printing 300 dpi music.

Your piano wouldn't have (or need) MPU-401 compatibility,
since MPU-401 is the MIDI UART into to which you plug any
standard MIDI device.  I've a vague recollection that some
wavetable expansion boards hang off the UART so perhaps your
data is "going out of the wrong hole". Did you have speakers
connected to the speaker or line-out connector while you
squirted MIDI data at the MPU-401?  When you tried the FM
synth, did you have it turned up in the mixer?  Do you get
seperate device names in dmesg?

The piano is plugged from MIDI OUT to the SB16 gameport.  After I got no sound
through the piano, I then also plugged speakers into Line Out.  The speakers
work in DOS with FM synthesis but not in linux with FM synthesis.  The
speakers play WAV files in both DOS and linux.  This card has no wavetable
capabilities (not AWE32 or AWE64).  I have played FM synthesis on AWE cards
but it is not working on this card, maybe it is plug and play.  I will try
a non-plug-and-play card, or set up the CTCM in DOS.  

I did not adjust FM sound.  There was no need to do this in other computers
with FM synthesis and SB16 cards, or when playing wav files.  I don't have
a mixer installed on this computer (aumix) but could try adding one in case
the piano needs things louder.  I have something for DOS (svc?, maybe also
something from SB).  

First we need to get different RAM in this computer, or a different computer.
I can't even try MIDI FM synthesis in the computer I am typing on because I
did not have enough ISA slots to put in a good sound card and had to use SB
Live, which does not do FM synthesis (or in my linux, AWE - it needs ALSA).
I will try an ESS card in here instead.  

Today we may take Win98 to the branch library to test wireless again.  I think
we need to fill in an SSID.

If you want to play music from the computer out to the
piano, your cable must run from the sound card to the MIDI
IN port on the piano.  The cable must also be wired for MIDI
output (I've seen some that are just for MIDI input).

In NetBSD, even if I don't have aumix installed I can
control the mixer using 'mixerctl'.  Linux should have some
equivalent.  Your mixer settings will not effect the piano's
volume, but if the data were somehow mis-routed to a tone
generator (FM synth or wavetable) on the sound card, at
least you would hear the music coming from the computer and
know what had happened.

For RAM, do you just need a PC66 SDRAM DIMM?

Good luck with the wireless LAN test.

The MIDI cable has four ends - MIDI IN, MIDI OUT, something that plugs into
the gameport, and something after that a joystick can be plugged into.
I rigged up a cable extender (we have not yet used it) out of two Apple-to-PC
video cables and a connector between them of some sort.  I want to get FM
synthesis and the RAM working before trying anything else.  I will try a
jumpered SB16 or SBPRO.  Linux has aumix if I want it.  I have a small linux
to which you add what you need.

Jim has to get two used folding bikes ready to test before we bike to the
library with the computer.  He wants to visit his sister in Detroit area
Easter weekend, by train, and it is a 15 mile bike ride from and to the
nearest train station to her house.  $26 round trip each if we order a few
weeks in advance, otherwise as much as $58 last-minute.  We might go a day
early and come back Tuesday.  You can no longer take bikes on the train in
the baggage car (it goes empty through all of Michigan) so we need something
that folds.  If we have car insurance already, it would be cheaper to rent
a car for the weekend ($30 Friday evening to Sunday evening) but a lot more
polluting and less fun, and this way we will also have transportation while
in Warren and can bike to the coast to visit his sister.  It will be my first
'bike camping' trip since 2002.  

Can you guess why we are not getting a house built?

The wireless card did not find a signal, so I tried to check the PCMCIA slots
with the winmodem, which Win98 found as PCMCIA card along with the wireless
card, but it 'could not open port'.  I will try a known working normal modem
with 2-floppy linux in that computer.  The library said to try downtown, where
they have USB ports.  Downtown said they were not working.  The west branch
library plans to get new computers with USB slots.  They don't have paralle
or even serial ports, just floppy drives, and we can't put on software to
split a large file up into pieces so it will go onto several disks.  The
librarian suggested paying Kinko's 40 cents/min to download to USB stick. 

Can you run COMMAND or CMD on these machines?

What is COMMAND or CMD?  We can't run anything not already on them.  Last I
checked you were stuck with IE (they used to have Netscape) which could not
display a large image to fit on the page, nor was there any other way to
shrink it.  Someone sent me a 3MB jpeg which I tried to view at the library
instead of downloading 30 min at home.  

COMMAND is the command line interpreter in DOS and versions
of MS Windows that live on top of DOS (Win 95, 98, ME etc.)
CMD is the command interpreter for newer versions of Windows
(2000, XP and perhaps NT)  I asked because I have command-
line tools that can be useful for chopping up large files
to fit on diskettes, archiving, compression and checksum
calculation.

If Netscape is like Mozilla (on which it is based), the
behaviour of large images in the browser is a configuration
option or preference.  I prefer my browser /not/ to shrink
large images, so I have it set that way.

The library did not have Mozilla or Netscape, just IE.  I have DOS programs
(split and rzsplit) for chopping up files, but I cannot use them on the
library computer, just the programs they have installed there.  (Or can I run
programs from a floppy disk in a DOS window on a Windows XP library computer?
In which case I could download a 10MB file and split it to 6 floppy disks.
Library computers used to have serial ports, which we could use for camera
downloads then transfer to floppy disk.  They don't even have those now.  Good
thing we got big memory cards so we don't need to download until we fill up
64MB while travelling.  I have a little linux that boots from floppy disk and
then runs off parallel port zip drive, but you need a parallel port.  The
hardware is a lot smaller than a laptop computer, but slower.  

You may be able to run your programs in a command line
window even on a restricted PC (if it's not so restricted
that you can't get to a command line).  You will need a
folder on the hard disk that you have read/write access to
(perhaps something within the folder that %temp% points to).

If we can run programs, we can run them from a floppy disk, but I recall
computers with no command line, you had to use the menu or the icons.  I doubt
they would let us boot from our own floppy disk.

Someone offered us more memory cards, so we would not need to download photos
to library computers while on a trip, but this still does not let us download
from the web via broadband to something we can take home.

Out of interest, what kind of memory cards are you using?
This past week I priced up various types of flash card and
they seem to cost about US$ 0.08 per Megabyte.

Smartmedia and Compact Flash.  I paid $16 for 64MB including postage at ebay,
which is over 3 times what you quoted.  The newer formats are in larger sizes
and cheaper per MB but we don't need larger and we can't use newer.

My cheap digital camera uses Smartmedia. Although I like the
format, I don't think I'll buy another card when this one
dies because they're just not cost-effective.  My wife's new
digital camera uses xD cards and works beautifully with my
NetBSD machines...

umass1: OLYMPUS uD600,S600, rev 1.10/1.00, addr 5
umass1: using SCSI over Bulk-Only
scsibus1 at umass1: 2 targets, 1 luns per target
scsibus1: waiting 2 seconds for devices to settle...
sd1 at scsibus1 target 1 lun 0: <OLYMPUS, uD600,S600, 1.00>
SCSI2 0/direct removable
sd1: mode sense (4) returned nonsense; using fictitious
geometry
sd1: 499 MB, 499 cyl, 64 head, 32 sec, 512 bytes/sect x
1023120 sectors

        ...the xD card also works with a SanDisk multiformat
USB card reader that I received for my birthday.  I've just
backed up pictures from the camera onto my computer quickly
and easily using 'tar cvf ~ball/100olymp.tar 100olymp'.  I
could make it a menu item: one click could mount, archive
the files, dismount and eject the camera.

My Smartmedia camera is also Olympus.  I got it because it has a serial
download cable that works in DOS.  Jim's USB-download camera works in DOS,
my Smartmedia reader does not, his reader does.  So now we are prepared to
download on computers with serial or USB ports.  Last time we took a bike trip
with a serial-download camera we forgot to bring a 9-to-25 pin adaptor. 
Someone still had an XT.

Is Jim's Smartmedia card reader USB?  I hadn't realised that
USB support had been added to DOS.  Mine is an inexpensive
PNY FPTS-S USB card reader.  Given a properly-implemented
Smartmedia card, it works with NetBSD.

Jim has the Compact Flash camera and reader.  I have a Smartmedia camera with
serial cable, and a Smartmedia USB card reader.  DOS supports the CF camera
and reader but not my Olympus card reader.  usbaspi5.sys and di1000dd.sys /v
/w (devicehigh=).  The /w tells it to wait while you plug in the device.  /v
is verbose, I think.  

It is spring, we are digging the garden instead of playing with PCMCIA now.

I live on the second (third) floor and my yard is a small
cedar trough that so far this year is bare.

I have known people to garden in large pots.  Patio tomatoes.

I don't have a suitable site for large outdoor pots at
present.  It seems likely that we will have to move house
this year, so any outdoor gardening plans are on hold.

Back to one of the topics of this item:  Someone suggested we try
playing midi files to the electronic piano from Windows. The laptop has
no midi port so we dragged the desktop computer out from under the desk
and put it next to the piano with the 9" monitor and set the display to
640.  It played silence after I changed from FM synthesis to MPU-401 in
Windows Media Player.  Jim was going to check signal output so I
unplugged the MIDI cables from the MIDI IN and MIDI OUT ports on the
piano and asked Jim why the MIDI OUT was connected to the OUT end of the
cable from the computer.  I plugged the OUT end into MIDI IN on the
piano and was rewarded with a very loud sound.  We turned down the
volume.  I can now also play midi files in DOS with playb playpak gsplay
and beatmaster, and in linux with playmidi. I need to learn how to
record and edit and compose MIDI files with beatmaster (which lets you
type notes in on the keyboard while playing other notes) and/or linux
Rosegarden. This linux computer still won't play FM synthesized sounds
in linux but it plays them in DOS.  Linux also won't work with most of
my 360K floppy drives, and with one or two keyboards.

Still no luck with the wireless PCMCIA card.  I have to check that
computer with known working PCMCIA card (16-bit, my linux won't do
32-bit cards). Next challenge is to compile a printing program for the
Epson printer we found at the curb that had clogged internal nozzles but
all colors of ink.

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