on giving an old laptop new wifi powers!

[taxico]

okay,

i have an old thinkpad and a dlink usb wifi dongle lying around. it has no network jack, no floppy or optical drives and runs win98se.

i badly want to use it to stream internet radio... so i've enabled the usb mass storage device support to install the wifi driver.

now i can't seem to get the wifi device recognized by the laptop (the software installs okay).

i intend to do a full reformat and perhaps install XP, but before i do that does anybody know if older P2/P3 laptops can support wifi devices or is this a lost cause?

i've also tried a wifi pc-card (to no avail).

[sierra2469alpha]

As long as you have the drivers for both USB and the USB wifi dongle for your operating system of choice you should be OK. Alternatively, you could go with a PCMCIA wirelaess card if the USB wireless doesn't work.

Oh and you'll need to install networking for 98SE if you haven't already (I am assuming not seeing your kit doesn't have a network jack)

HTH, Mr. P

[Edit: completeness]

[Jedi]

If upgrading to XP is an option go with that. Why flog a dead horse? (Win98)

[taxico]

coz installing xp on a p3 is kinda time consuming... :b

i have the drivers for both wifi devices but the notebook just won't recognize it...

i'll try to win98 networking thing next week and hopefully it'll work.

[durain]

xp pro on a PIII still very usable la if all you gonna be using it for streaming music or surfing the net. i have installed xp pro on a thinkpad 240 with a celeron 300mhz CPU and with 128mb ram. yes, does take ages but it will get there. only install xp for the drivers and software support such as antivirus and firewall, etc.

only win98se i got is running on a thinkpad 760 which is a Pentium 133Mhz and 32mb ram!