Win98 wireless ethernet card (PCMCIA)

Mar 25 13:32 UTC 2006

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.

response 2 of 32:

Mar 25 17:09 UTC 2006

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.  

response 4 of 32:

Mar 25 21:26 UTC 2006

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.

response 6 of 32:

Mar 26 17:09 UTC 2006

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?

response 8 of 32:

Mar 27 06:38 UTC 2006

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.

response 10 of 32:

Mar 29 05:22 UTC 2006

"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?

response 12 of 32:

Mar 29 14:40 UTC 2006

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?

response 14 of 32:

Mar 29 16:38 UTC 2006

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.

response 16 of 32:

Mar 31 03:51 UTC 2006

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. 

response 18 of 32:

Mar 31 13:27 UTC 2006

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.  

response 20 of 32:

Mar 31 17:59 UTC 2006

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.  

response 22 of 32:

Apr 1 21:25 UTC 2006

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.

response 24 of 32:

Apr 2 14:47 UTC 2006

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.