Wired networking for the $15 Laptop

Since I shocked it back to life, the $15 Laptop (1999 Compaq 7770dmt with 233 MHz Pentium II MMX CPU, 144 MB RAM and 3 GB hard drive) has relied on an Orinoco WaveLAN Silver 802.11b wireless PCMCIA card for networking.

The WaveLAN is truly a wonder, working in both my 1996 Apple Macintosh Powerbook 1400, plus just about every damn thing made thereafter, and it has served me quite well in the years since I fought and scratched for it on eBay.

But I don't really have a lot of wireless networking in my life. My Netgear router used to pump out 802.11b, but the radio died about a year ago, and the router is now wired-only, where it continues to work wonderfully.

And at the Daily News offices, no WiFi penetrates the hallowed halls of Editorial, where all I have at my disposal is wired Ethernet.

The wide-open WiFi signals I sometimes "borrow" from my neighbors are weak at best and usually don't work. The best WiFi I've tried is at the Los Angeles Public Library's many branches, but I don't have time to linger.

And the now-free WiFi for Starbucks cardholders works great with the Compaq in Linux but not at all on OpenBSD (I know this because OpenBSD wireless on this very laptop does work at the library).

So I've been contemplating purchase of a PCMCIA/Cardbus Ethernet card for some time. They're cheap. But do they work on my ancient hardware and many and varied operating systems?

I picked up a TRENDnet TE100-PCBUSR 10/100Mbps 32-Bit CardBus Fast Ethernet Card last week and finally got a chance to remove the Orinoco WaveLAN card, insert the TRENDNet and give it a try.

It works!

The TRENDnet uses a tried, true and otherwise compatible Realtek chipset with the 8139too Linux driver.

I had no trouble loading the driver and configuring the card in Puppy Linux 2.13 (where I had to select the driver on my own) and Puppy 4.00 (where the system detected the card and correctly chose the driver for me).

So for the first time in the year or so that I've had the Compaq Armada 7770dmt, I have reliable networking for the aging but still sturdy laptop at both home and work.

The next thing I'm going to try is seeing if the laptop can physically accommodate the TRENDnet wired and Orinoco wireless cards at the same time, and if I can in turn configure both to work without having to pull one and plug in the other.

$15 Laptop note: The eight-part series on finding the right OS for the $1Compaq Armada 7770dmt is ready to run. All I need to do is get the entries into Movable Type and queue them up to run. I hope to do that in the next few days.