Ideas for retro PCMCIA wireless connectivity on the go \ VOGONS

Ideas for retro PCMCIA wireless connectivity on the go

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First post, by Kahenraz

Posted on 2016-06-07, 10:35

Kahenraz Offline

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I've always wanted to pick out a great retro laptop and carry it around with me to work on the go. A lot of what I do can be done over the internet and ssh to remotely log into another machine which does the heavy lifting.

The trick is to figure out how to connect to the internet. I have the possibility of tethering with my phone but 16-bit adapters will be a problem. The best one I could find is the Cisco Aironet 350 but the non-cardbus variant only supports wireless-a/b at 2.4Ghz and my phone, while it can broadcast as 2.4Ghz, uses wireless-g.

There is the potential to use an ethernet adapter which connects to an access point which then connects to my phone wirelessly. But I don't think there is anything too compact for that.

Any ideas? The more retro and archaic looking the laptop I can get the better. 😀

Another alternative would be to gut an old laptop and get a raspberry pi working inside of it with all of the old parts on the outside. I don't know if it would even be possible to write it up to get the original keyboard/mouse and screen working through.

Reply 1 of 7, by chinny22

Posted on 2016-06-07, 12:38

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First off are you sure you will get OK frame rates remote into the remote PC? Even over a local hard wired LAN the refresh rate drops pretty quick.
Not trying to put you off, just something you may want to confirm before putting money towards it.

Reply 2 of 7, by Kahenraz

Posted on 2016-06-07, 22:05

Kahenraz Offline

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SSH is a remote shell. Completely text-based.

Reply 3 of 7, by Arctic

Posted on 2016-06-08, 03:35

Arctic Offline

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I have a NIB IBM PCMCIA - GSM / ISDN card 😀
Is that what you meant?

Reply 4 of 7, by Kahenraz

Posted on 2016-06-08, 04:35

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I don't know what I'm after just yet. Still trying to figure out the workable logistics.

I'd like to come up with a solution which uses my phone as an access point.

Reply 5 of 7, by lolo799

Posted on 2016-06-08, 11:20

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A Bluetooth card would do the trick, no?

PCMCIA Sound, Storage & Graphics

Reply 6 of 7, by Arctic

Posted on 2016-06-08, 11:26

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I used to share the Internet connection between two PCs by using Bluetooth.
It worked well up to 1MBit/s

Reply 7 of 7, by ElementalChaos

Posted on 2016-06-08, 21:30

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I have an Orinoco Gold 16-bit card that I've gotten working on as old as Windows 95 with a Toshiba Satellite Pro 425CDT. That's a pretty retro-looking laptop, and the big black li-ion batteries Toshiba used on all their old Satellites still hold charge after all these years. At least all 3 of the ones I've found still hold a charge of just over an hour each.

It only supports 802.11a/b though, but I don't remember having any problems connecting to a hotspot from my Nexus 5. What phone do you have? Maybe there's a setting hidden somewhere that changes the wireless mode.

Another problem, most of these cards support WEP security at maximum, and I don't think any phones nowadays allow you to make hotspots with WEP passwords. So you'd have to carry an open hotspot with you all the time.

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