i tried another exhaustive search for prior versions of bcmwl5.sys and combed thru several dozen more driver packages, but the earliest i could find was 3.10.27.0 from this ftp archive: https://www.hep.phy.cam.ac.uk/~lester/dtm662/laptop/cbg54/

there's evidence that there were a dozen or more driver releases before this, but they may be absent from any surviving source on the internet because there was a security vulnerability identified in the earliest drivers.

i have since tried to get this pcmcia card working in nt4 & win98fe facing similar failure. i'm stuck with win2k/xp which is a bit beyond the requirements of my 75mhz pentium, 40mb ram target laptop (win2k will install, but there are major incompatibilities with the cirrus logic pcmcia slots).

Did you look in win98/me isos?

Wouldn't hurt to look for any"ultimate wifi boot floppy" that may exist. It'll be a dos driver if it exists, but it'll work.

Ndis2 aren't super hard to set up