Wireless on slow Pentium laptop?

I was given an old Dell Latitude CP laptop with 160 Mhz processor,
running Win98SE. I would like to set this up to access the Internet from
library hotspots, etc. However, I've tried using NetGear and Tenda USB
dongles, a Zyxel USB device, and a D-Link cardbus wireless adapter, all
unsuccessfully. All of these adapters have worked on other computers.
The drivers and utility programs all install normally, Device Manager says
that the devices work properly, and the control programs see access points
and show wireless signal strength as expected. But they don't establish
usable Internet connections; Internet Explorer will not display Web pages,
nor can I make telnet connections to my ISP.

I'm beginning to suspect that the 160 Mhz processor is simply not
fast enough to handle wireless Internet. Can anyone here confirm or
refute that? Are any USB or cardbus wireless adapter models known to be
able to make functional Internet connections on computers like this?

--Donald Davis
--
--Donald Davis

[To respond by e-mail, remove "blackhole." from the address.]

On Tue, 20 Feb 2007 23:01:39 +0000, Donald G. Davis wrote:

> I'm beginning to suspect that the 160 Mhz processor is simply not
> fast enough to handle wireless Internet. Can anyone here confirm or
> refute that? Are any USB or cardbus wireless adapter models known to be
> able to make functional Internet connections on computers like this?

I don't think processor speed is an issue at all, but a machine of this
vintage may not support a cardbus pcmcia card and the USB support may not
be compatible either. Check the specs on your adapters and the Dell site
for the specs for the laptop.

Donald G. Davis wrote:
> I'm beginning to suspect that the 160 Mhz processor is simply not
> fast enough to handle wireless Internet. Can anyone here confirm or
> refute that?

My old laptop would also have the same problem, it was 333Mhz with 32Mb
RAM - sticking in another 128Mb RAM solved the problem immediately. If you
don't have much RAM think about putting some more in. Mine also came with
Win98 but I created a cut down version of Win2K using nLite and maybe that
could help you wth better/newer driver support for Win2K?

As viewed from alt.internet.wireless, mr.b wrote:

>Donald G. Davis wrote:
>>I'm beginning to suspect that the 160 Mhz processor is simply not
>>fast enough to handle wireless Internet. Can anyone here confirm
>>or refute that? Are any USB or cardbus wireless adapter models
>>known to be able to make functional Internet connections on
>>computers like this?

>I don't think processor speed is an issue at all, but a machine of
>this vintage may not support a cardbus pcmcia card and the USB
>support may not be compatible either. Check the specs on your
>adapters and the Dell site for the specs for the laptop.

I used to run wireless on a Toshiba Satellite Pentium 133 with
Win98SE running on 48mb of RAM using a D-Link 802.11b USB adapter.

On Wed, 21 Feb 2007 06:40:15 -0800, emtech wrote:

> I used to run wireless on a Toshiba Satellite Pentium 133 with Win98SE
> running on 48mb of RAM using a D-Link 802.11b USB adapter.

so the OP should buy a Toshiba Satellite??? Evidently your hardware
worked.

As viewed from alt.internet.wireless, mr.b wrote:

>emtech wrote:
>>I used to run wireless on a Toshiba Satellite Pentium 133 with
>>Win98SE running on 48mb of RAM using a D-Link 802.11b USB adapter.

>so the OP should buy a Toshiba Satellite???

Not necessarily. That's just what I happened to have at the time.

>Evidently your hardware worked.

Yes it did.

Donald G. Davis <(E-Mail Removed)> hath wroth:

> I was given an old Dell Latitude CP laptop with 160 Mhz processor,
>running Win98SE. I would like to set this up to access the Internet from
>library hotspots, etc. However, I've tried using NetGear and Tenda USB
>dongles, a Zyxel USB device, and a D-Link cardbus wireless adapter, all
>unsuccessfully. All of these adapters have worked on other computers.
>The drivers and utility programs all install normally, Device Manager says
>that the devices work properly, and the control programs see access points
>and show wireless signal strength as expected. But they don't establish
>usable Internet connections; Internet Explorer will not display Web pages,
>nor can I make telnet connections to my ISP.
>
> I'm beginning to suspect that the 160 Mhz processor is simply not
>fast enough to handle wireless Internet. Can anyone here confirm or
>refute that? Are any USB or cardbus wireless adapter models known to be
>able to make functional Internet connections on computers like this?
>
> --Donald Davis

It's a 166 or 233 MHz processor.

Basically true. I have a P133 Compaq something laptop that works just
fine with a few PCMCIA wireless cards (Orinico Silver) but is a total
loss with USB devices. The difference is that with older PCMCIA, much
of the protocol processing is done in hardware on the card, while it's
done in software (i.e. in the driver) with USB. Just compare the size
of the respective drivers.

The DLink Cardbus adapter might be an oddity. It's difficult to tell
because you didn't bother supplying the model numbers (or the exact
laptop model). DLink has several models with radically different
chipsets inside but similar sounding model numbers. The older 16 bit
ones did much of the processing on the card and should work. The
newer ones are similar to USB and do it all in the driver. I'm rather
amazed that you were able to insert a 32bit PC Card/cardbus device
into a laptop that only has a 16bit PCMCIA slot.

--
Jeff Liebermann (E-Mail Removed)
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

Den Wed, 21 Feb 2007 08:48:08 -0800. skrev Jeff Liebermann:

> Donald G. Davis <(E-Mail Removed)> hath wroth:
>
>> I was given an old Dell Latitude CP laptop with 160 Mhz processor,
>>running Win98SE. I would like to set this up to access the Internet from

<SNIP>

> It's a 166 or 233 MHz processor.
>
> Basically true. I have a P133 Compaq something laptop that works just
> fine with a few PCMCIA wireless cards (Orinico Silver) but is a total
> loss with USB devices. The difference is that with older PCMCIA, much
> of the protocol processing is done in hardware on the card, while it's
> done in software (i.e. in the driver) with USB. Just compare the size
> of the respective drivers.
>
> The DLink Cardbus adapter might be an oddity. It's difficult to tell
> because you didn't bother supplying the model numbers (or the exact
> laptop model). DLink has several models with radically different
> chipsets inside but similar sounding model numbers. The older 16 bit
> ones did much of the processing on the card and should work. The
> newer ones are similar to USB and do it all in the driver. I'm rather
> amazed that you were able to insert a 32bit PC Card/cardbus device
> into a laptop that only has a 16bit PCMCIA slot.

It's not often that one gets the chance to correct you, Jeff, so I'll
pounce on the occasion here

The Dell Latitude CP series of Laptops has got 2 CardBus slot, and not
PCMCIA slots. AFAIR they were the first line of Dell laptops that got
CardBus. Link to the specs :

http://support.dell.com/support/edoc...ojav/specs.htm

They are quite good machines, and runs Linux quite well as long as you got
the max 128 Mb ram they can take. XP runs on them as well, but don't
expect a speeddeamon.

I've used the 233 Mhz versions with a Atheros 5213 based PCCard without
any problems, under both OS's. Actually the first 60.000+ networks I
collected during my wardrives, were collected by that laptop. Later on, I
converted one of them into a digital pictureframe, and another one has
been made into a selfcontained Wardriveing blackbox, and was installed
into a taxicab for a month (netted me 30K+ new networks for my Wigle
stats, which is quite good over here in Copenhagen).

J.D. "Dutch" Schmidt
Moderator, Netstumbler Forums

e-teori <lyngbytest_nospam_@_nospam_business.tele.dk> hath wroth:

>Den Wed, 21 Feb 2007 08:48:08 -0800. skrev Jeff Liebermann:
>
>> Donald G. Davis <(E-Mail Removed)> hath wroth:
>>
>>> I was given an old Dell Latitude CP laptop with 160 Mhz processor,
>>>running Win98SE. I would like to set this up to access the Internet from
>
><SNIP>
>
>> It's a 166 or 233 MHz processor.
>>
>> Basically true. I have a P133 Compaq something laptop that works just
>> fine with a few PCMCIA wireless cards (Orinico Silver) but is a total
>> loss with USB devices. The difference is that with older PCMCIA, much
>> of the protocol processing is done in hardware on the card, while it's
>> done in software (i.e. in the driver) with USB. Just compare the size
>> of the respective drivers.
>>
>> The DLink Cardbus adapter might be an oddity. It's difficult to tell
>> because you didn't bother supplying the model numbers (or the exact
>> laptop model). DLink has several models with radically different
>> chipsets inside but similar sounding model numbers. The older 16 bit
>> ones did much of the processing on the card and should work. The
>> newer ones are similar to USB and do it all in the driver. I'm rather
>> amazed that you were able to insert a 32bit PC Card/cardbus device
>> into a laptop that only has a 16bit PCMCIA slot.

>It's not often that one gets the chance to correct you, Jeff, so I'll
>pounce on the occasion here

Oh, it's easy enough to catch my errors. It happens all too often
when I'm lazy or in a rush. Also when I don't bother to check all the
details or rely on my rapidly failing memory. I may have a Dell CPi
233MHz in the pile somewhere. It died long ago thanks to a fried
motherboard. I could swear that a 32 bit card did't fit, but I'm
apparently wrong. I'll double check if I find it.

>The Dell Latitude CP series of Laptops has got 2 CardBus slot, and not
>PCMCIA slots. AFAIR they were the first line of Dell laptops that got
>CardBus. Link to the specs :
>http://support.dell.com/support/edoc...ojav/specs.htm

I stand corrected. (I just hate it when that happens).

>They are quite good machines, and runs Linux quite well as long as you got
>the max 128 Mb ram they can take. XP runs on them as well, but don't
>expect a speeddeamon.

I've run XP on machines with 128MBytes just to see what happens. It
was a painful experience which I don't want to repeat.

>I've used the 233 Mhz versions with a Atheros 5213 based PCCard without
>any problems, under both OS's. Actually the first 60.000+ networks I
>collected during my wardrives, were collected by that laptop. Later on, I
>converted one of them into a digital pictureframe, and another one has
>been made into a selfcontained Wardriveing blackbox, and was installed
>into a taxicab for a month (netted me 30K+ new networks for my Wigle
>stats, which is quite good over here in Copenhagen).

Impressive collection of AP's. I wish I had the time. One of "my
never have time to finish" projects is a 2.4GHz direction finder. It
should be an interesting addition to the war driving arsenal.

The AR5213 seems to be one of the chips where most of the processing
was moved back into hardware. Kinda hard to tell for sure from the
description.
<http://www.atheros.com/pt/AR5004GBulletin.htm>
"A single driver and firmware code base supports all Atheros
chipsets, and provides both backward and forward compatibility
with Atheros previous and next-generation multi-standard designs."
If that's true, then there's not much the driver has to do as all the
hard stuff is done on the chip. That also makes it suitable for
underpowered CPU's. Built in PC Card interface so I guess that's
supported.

>J.D. "Dutch" Schmidt
>Moderator, Netstumbler Forums

Thanks for the correction.
--
Jeff Liebermann (E-Mail Removed)
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

On Thu, 22 Feb 2007 06:23:30 -0800, Jeff Liebermann
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>e-teori <lyngbytest_nospam_@_nospam_business.tele.dk> hath wroth:

>>The Dell Latitude CP series of Laptops has got 2 CardBus slot, and not
>>PCMCIA slots. AFAIR they were the first line of Dell laptops that got
>>CardBus. Link to the specs :
>>http://support.dell.com/support/edoc...ojav/specs.htm

>I stand corrected. (I just hate it when that happens).

I found what remains of a Latitude CPi D233ST laptop. I cramed a
Netgear WG511v2 32 bit card in the slots, and it fits just fine. Just
ignore what I previously wrote. (Grumble...)

--
# Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
# 831-336-2558 (E-Mail Removed)
# http://802.11junk.com (E-Mail Removed)
# http://www.LearnByDestroying.com AE6KS