VOGONS


First post, by ppgrainbow

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Hello, everyone!

I hope that everyone is having a good Christmas so far as much as I have.

I recently acquired a used Toshiba Tecra 500CDT retro laptop from smileysshop on eBay for $137. The laptop originally had Windows 98 Second Edition. However, for a 1.35 GB Toshiba MK1301MACV-HDD2712 Enhanced IDE hard drive. The drive was FAT32 and that OS proven to be too big to fit on a hard drive.

I managed to wipe the hard drive using FDISK and format the drive as FAT16, install MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1. I also installed, the C&T HQV32 (CT65550) video display as well as the Crystal Semiconductor CS4232 sound driver and SystemSoft's CardSoft16/CardWizard PCMCIA configuration utility.

Since I installed MS-DOS along with the appropriate drivers, can you help me find which PCMCIA Ethernet card and the packet drivers that will work under MS-DOS with minimal memory consumption?

Thank you for your time. 😀

Last edited by ppgrainbow on 2024-01-01, 09:19. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1 of 7, by Horun

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Which PCMCIA Ether card is it ? There were a few back then....and Toshiba did not include one by default: https://support.dynabook.com/support/staticCo … ontentId=638383
Need more info. And Merry Christmas to you too.

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 2 of 7, by ppgrainbow

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Horun wrote on 2023-12-26, 04:00:

Which PCMCIA Ether card is it ? There were a few back then....and Toshiba did not include one by default: https://support.dynabook.com/support/staticCo … ontentId=638383
Need more info. And Merry Christmas to you too.

Thanks for the response. 😀

The Tecra 500CDT comes with two stacked PC Card Slots (CardBus and ZV Card ready).

The unit comes with a 32-bit, 3.3 volt PC CardBus slot and a 16-bit 5 volt PC Card slot.

I was considering getting a Netgear FA410TX PCMCIA network card and a PCMCIA LAN cable that requires it.

#1 https://www.ebay.com/itm/114895895384
#2 https://www.ebay.com/itm/184850980266

However, I would need to find a packet driver for it to work under MS-DOS. I also need to get a working Ethernet cable to connect to the back of my Arris NVG443B router.

If you want me to show the current contents of my CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files, let me know.. 😄

Reply 4 of 7, by ppgrainbow

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lolo799 wrote on 2023-12-26, 11:46:

You can't go wrong with a 3com 16bit pcmcia card, 3c589 iirc.

I'll do a search for 3COM 3C589 16-bit PCMCIA card on eBay to see if they have it and I'll let you know if I have found one. 😀

What I found are 3COM 3C589C and 3C589D series PCMCIA network cards on eBay.

Here's a 3COM 3C589D-TP PCMCIA network card with RJ45 dongle cable, on sale for $14.95: https://www.ebay.com/itm/374908838042

I'm gonna try to do more research on which other PCMCIA Ethernet cards that will work under MS-DOS before ordering it.

Reply 5 of 7, by lolo799

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ppgrainbow wrote on 2023-12-26, 12:11:
I'll do a search for 3COM 3C589 16-bit PCMCIA card on eBay to see if they have it and I'll let you know if I have found one. :) […]
Show full quote
lolo799 wrote on 2023-12-26, 11:46:

You can't go wrong with a 3com 16bit pcmcia card, 3c589 iirc.

I'll do a search for 3COM 3C589 16-bit PCMCIA card on eBay to see if they have it and I'll let you know if I have found one. 😀

What I found are 3COM 3C589C and 3C589D series PCMCIA network cards on eBay.

Here's a 3COM 3C589D-TP PCMCIA network card with RJ45 dongle cable, on sale for $14.95: https://www.ebay.com/itm/374908838042

I'm gonna try to do more research on which other PCMCIA Ethernet cards that will work under MS-DOS before ordering it.

Yeah that's the one, it's only 10baseT though. The suffix letter indicates if it supports coaxial or rj45 or both I think.

If you prefer a faster 10/100 card, other noteworthy models the Xircom creditcard ethernet like the ce3b-100.

PCMCIA Sound, Storage & Graphics

Reply 6 of 7, by ppgrainbow

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lolo799 wrote on 2023-12-26, 14:09:
ppgrainbow wrote on 2023-12-26, 12:11:
I'll do a search for 3COM 3C589 16-bit PCMCIA card on eBay to see if they have it and I'll let you know if I have found one. :) […]
Show full quote
lolo799 wrote on 2023-12-26, 11:46:

You can't go wrong with a 3com 16bit pcmcia card, 3c589 iirc.

I'll do a search for 3COM 3C589 16-bit PCMCIA card on eBay to see if they have it and I'll let you know if I have found one. 😀

What I found are 3COM 3C589C and 3C589D series PCMCIA network cards on eBay.

Here's a 3COM 3C589D-TP PCMCIA network card with RJ45 dongle cable, on sale for $14.95: https://www.ebay.com/itm/374908838042

I'm gonna try to do more research on which other PCMCIA Ethernet cards that will work under MS-DOS before ordering it.

Yeah that's the one, it's only 10baseT though. The suffix letter indicates if it supports coaxial or rj45 or both I think.

If you prefer a faster 10/100 card, other noteworthy models the Xircom creditcard ethernet like the ce3b-100.

I'll go for the Xircom CE3B-100 if I can try to find one. 😀

Reply 7 of 7, by ppgrainbow

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I managed to solve my problem when I purchased a Xircom CreditCard Either Adapter IIps (Model no. PS-CE2-10BC) off of Amazon for $14.50 along with a Ethernet RJ-45 cable.

I plugged the cable into the dongle, inserted it in one of the PCMCIA/PC Card slots and plugged the Ethernet cable on the back of the Arris NVG443B router. On installation disk 2, there is a packet drive called CE2PD.EXE that I had to load in order to get internet access.

The end result is that I can now successfully connect to the internet as the driver identifies the MAC address as 00:00:C7:F2:f504.

However, I might want to be careful how I can handle the PCMCIA card as the dongle can break easily if I'm not careful.