Being a tightwad I'm still using an antique circa year 2000 vintage Pentium
730 mHz which was only intended as a stopgap when a previous faster pc died but is just fast enough to do what I need it for so I've never replaced it. I'd like to get rid of the cat 5 cable to the router which I keep tripping over by sticking a wireless card in it. My laptop (now broken) worked fine wirelessly anywhere in the house so I know the router isn't an issue.
Anything I need to be specifically aware of with such an old pc before I go and buy a completely unsuitable card and then find I can't plug it in?
Any chance the card in the laptop will fit the pc?
Posting the make and model of the PC would make life a lot easier for those willing to offer advice.
Things you need to consider:
(1) What bus does your PC support? i.e. what type of card will plug into the slots in the mother board? You may find that the PC is so old that there are no current cards which will fit. However used on eBay is always an option.
(2) What OS are you running? New cards are unlikely to have drivers which work with an old OS. Likewise old cards may well not have drivers included in a newer OS.
(2.1) This also applies to USB devices, which are an obvious alternative to a card.
(3) What is your attitude to network risk? You may find that the only compatible cards/USB devices run 802.11b wireless protocols and WEP security. This is so insecure it might as well be un-encrypted. So if you live on your own in the country, possibly fine. If you live in the student quarter of a large city you may well be hacked within 10 minutes of firing the wireless up.
One other alternative is to buy a modern wireless AP which has an ethernet port to connect to your PC (so no driver issues) and a wireless connection to your router.
These can be had for around £30 and are a very useful item generally - can be used to connect TVs and other smart devices to your router and also dig a PC out of trouble if it has issues with wireless drivers (such as when installing Ubuntu).
I'd second this solution - apart from it being slightly more expensive than getting a cheap PCI card, you'll get much more use out of this in the long term, and it would take the strain off the PC from running a wifi driver p ackage.
I echo that. I have a similarly-aged Dell, on which I run Ubuntu 8.04 for Zoneminder, and I wanted the same thing. Finding a card was no problem, but the Ubuntu 8.04 would not recognise the card. If I had not then hard-wired it instead, the Access Point solution would have been a good solution. The PC does not like later versions of Ubuntu, which is why It still runs 8.04, which is fine for the job it does.
I live in the middle of nowhere down a farm track 1.5 miles from the nearest two lane road. Unless the local rabbits or sheep get PC savvy I doubt security is much of a concern.
What OS is on this computer? Does it have USB ports. As others have said, a USB WiFi dongle is probably the cheapest and easiest solution.
Alternatively, if there is a nearby power point to which you could connect a short ethernet cable without tripping over it, you could replace the long? Cat5 cable with a pair of cheap power-line adapters.
Don't get too complacent just because of that 2,640 yard range (2,400 metres). A resourceful hacker can reel this in to an effective range of 300 metres or less if they use the "Wok Antenna" technique to boost the antenna gain at their end by 18db or more (quite a do-able exercise).
I know this seems very unlikely but, the conditions for such an operation are more in the hacker's favour with regard to hiding out of sight of potential witnesses. Such remote properties sitting in the middle of a not inconsiderable piece of real estate might be considered to be a more lucrative target than the typical council house or suburban property.
If you need to provide wireless coverage within the house, you can minimise even this risk by locating the AP or router on the ground floor (or better yet if you have one, the basement) and adjust the antenna(s) to spray the WiFi upwards through the more RF transparent wooden floors (assuming the ceiling plaster boards aren't foil backed). This can be spectactularly effective in old properties with thick stone or brick walls and plaster and lathe ceilings.
Er why don't you get a longer Cat5 cable and reroute it so it's not a trip hazard? Seems a far cheaper and less hassle solution than faffing about with WiFi.
10 m Cat5e Toolstation £4.68, 5 m £2.96.
10 m Cat5e Screwfix £5.20, 5 m £4.18.
Not quite as simple as that. PCI cards come in 3.3V and 5V versions, and a machine that old may only have support for 5V cards. Or only support PCI 2.1 when the card needs 2.2.
Adding new hardware to very old PCs... just don't go there. There's too many things that could trip you up. In theory it'll work but there will be stupid stuff causing roadblocks. Maybe they ship the drivers on a DVD but you only have a CD, something tedious like that.
The ethernet-wifi converter idea sounds like a good one - leaves the PC well alone. You'll need a browser capable of configuring the converter but, if you're using the PC for web anyway, you should be OK. Don't try and run any installation CD that comes with the converter.
You can get desktop PCI cards that accept PCMCIA laptop cards, but as you're a tightwad you might want to give one of these a go:
formatting link
£3.31 inc. P&P :-) I have a couple, I just tried one with Windows XP SP2 and it works fine as long as you use the configuration tool that comes with the driver download. I tried WPA2-PSK [AES] and Windows wouldn't connect to the router, but with the proprietary software it just worked, including automatic connection. This might be a link to the software download:
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