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SMC WLAN card Win ME installation problem
Hi, I have fixed up an older Dell Latitude CPi laptop running Win ME, it works quite well. I am now trying to install a SMCWCB-G WLAN card to connect it to my home network. This SMC card is supposed to work under all Windows OS from 98SE to XP, however, there is a strange thing regarding Win98/ME/2000: The SMC installation guide says: "cardbus specification is required (for 98SE/ME/2000), please check the documents for your cardbus driver before installing the SMC driver and utility software". This Dell has two slots/PCMCIA sockets, each with Texas Instruments PCI-1131 CardBus Controller. Is this PCI1131 the "cardbus driver" in question? My problem is that I have no such documentation, this PCI1131 driver is obsolete, and I have not been able to find any documentation. This doc. is obviously needed, because if I install the SMC driver software directly in the normal plug-and-play way (ignoring to check the documentation), the SMC card will not work properly, obviously I have to do some preparatory work which the documentation will tell me. I have tested this SMCWCB-card with Win XP installed on this laptop, the SMC driver installed perfectly well, and the card works without problems. But running XP on this laptop is too much, XP fills up all the memory and slows down the machine, so I will stick to Win ME. But obviously I have to do something with this PCI1131 driver to be able to install the SMC drivers properly, but what? Maybe this driver should be replaced by a newer one? I am quite confused, any experienced user having a suggestion, or knowing where to find the adequate documentation, or which driver should replace this PCI1131?
- DELL-Gina, Thank you, I really appreciate your follow-up. Up to now I think the ME and the basic OS driver installations are OK, but the SMC driver installation became more and more suspicious, finally I copied the files and made a manual installation, that helped, now the SMC card works quite well. The only strange thing is that I have to apply the SMC utility program every time after a boot (normally you apply only the very first time), it seems like ME is not able to automatically "catch" the card communication even if the card has correct contact with the router, but I just press "apply", and then the Internet connection works OK, I can live with that. However, during every boot the machine gives two beeps, I think this indicates some kind of incompatibility? I appreciate your comment to this. But as I said, it works more or less OK. If I later on have more questions I appreciate contacting you in this forum. Thank you.
Gina Q
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Posted March 5th, 2007 17:00