Airport Card in PC Laptop

[fezzikjr]

For unforseen reasons, I find myself with the need to use an Airport© card on my PC Laptop. The short story is that my normal PC's PCM/CIA wireless card was stolen, and I have not the money to purchase a new one.

Here's what I know so far:

The pin settings on my PC laptop (while I can't see them clearly enough inside the PCM/CIA slot in my laptop to 100% assure this) fit nice and snugly with the Airport card.

I use Windows 2000 Pro SP4.

The device manager doesn't even realize that I've put a piece of hardware in the above mentioned slot.... No prompt from the "Add New Hardware Wizard," or anything.

I have done some frighteningly circular searching on the net for such a fix, and am, hopefully, turning to you all for a resolution.

Any help for a hopeful convert? (( BTW, I'll be using my ol' 400Mhz G3 iMac DV SE - Graphite, once I get the money for a new power/analog/video board... Those things are rather bothersome to get to, for any of those that have tried........................ ))

Wishful thinking?

-FezzikJr
Mac Newbie, Internet Connectivity Enthusiast, PC user (( for shame! =D ))

[symphonix]

I'm afraid there were never Airport card drivers released for Windows, or indeed any platform other than Mac. The connection is based on PCMCIA2, but differs in that the connections inside a Mac have an extra plug to support the built-in antenna, while PC laptops need to use an antenna attached to the card by some other means. Even if you could get drivers (which simply don't exist), you'd still need an antenna to get signal.

[Viro]

Actually, I beg to differ with Symphonix. Back when I had my iBook G3 and was told that they were stopping the manufacture of airport cards, I got an IBM PCMCIA card that was for all intents, the same as the Apple Airport card. The only difference was that the IBM card had an antenna (removable) fitted to it. Once it was removed it could be slotted into the Airport slot and the iBook antenna was connected easily. In fact, Mac OS X even detected it as an Airport card and it worked flawlessly from the get go.

Now, the thing is this card was made for IBM laptops, and I believe the product ID was 09N9904. If you can find the drivers for this card, you should be able to get Airport working on your PC.

[fezzikjr]

Well..... I do have the antenna that came with the card. I figured the connection of that was a given. I did some searching (at work, so it may not be 100% thorough) on the net, and found some info on drivers for 09N9904, but I'm not sure if it would work that way. The primary problem is that it doesn't even pull up in the device manager, as if Windows doesn't even realize I've connected a piece of hardware.
Perhaps, this would help.........
If anyone has an airport card, and a windows-based PC, I'd like to know if they get the same result. If they don't, that tells me there's something wrong with my airport card. If they do, that tells me that I may need to continue my searching for a fix to this.
Thanks in advance,


-FezzikJr
Mac Newbie, Internet Connectivity Enthusiast, PC user (( for shame! =D ))