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Repurpose a Cisco Aironet 350 PCI card module as a PCMCIA network card in a 486 laptop?

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First post, by bbence84

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Hi! I have found the following PCI network card for cheap on a local auction site:
https://www.vatera.hu/cisco-aironet-350-pci-w … 3505622036.html
It looks as if the wifi module is exactly the same as the PCMCI card of the same name, with the exception of the antenna piece.
Do you think I could remove the module and use it it a 486 laptop? (Siemens Nixdorf PCD-4ND, AFAIK it has a 5V PCMCIA card slot)
Or are these completely different modules?

Thanks!
Bence

Reply 1 of 2, by EduBat

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In principle yes, it should physically work.

https://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/wireless/wla … ide/winicg5.pdf

According to this document there are drivers for W98 and NT. You would need to be running either of these 2 OSes on the 486 so you would need a reasonable amount of RAM.

Reply 2 of 2, by bbence84

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EduBat wrote on 2026-06-22, 17:30:

In principle yes, it should physically work.

https://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/wireless/wla … ide/winicg5.pdf

According to this document there are drivers for W98 and NT. You would need to be running either of these 2 OSes on the 486 so you would need a reasonable amount of RAM.

Thanks! Actually I was more looking for making this card work in Win 3.11 or Win 95 the latest, since I only have 20MB RAM and a 75MHZ 486 CPU in this laptop. I read that the PCMCIA version of this network card works in such configurations, but I am a bit unsure about tearing the PCI version apart, maybe they have some internal differences or different firmware...

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