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Early Vid: PCMCIA Cards in Linksys Routers?

🕑 Added 2024-04-24 19:12:57 +0000 UTC

Comments

clabretro

nothing too painful yet 😂

Mac Folklore Radio

Oh ... oh dear. Looks like everyone on YouTube found this video. I apologize on behalf of humanity in advance—you're probably drowning in dumb insults. :\

clabretro

thanks! yeah basically same here... I use PC Card and PCMCIA interchangeably throughout the video but really I mostly refer to them as PCMCIA

Liquorist

Also these videos are my favourite part of my Saturday morning routine, so thanks so much for making them. I saved this one for Saturday this week, and it's been perfect.

Liquorist

I can only speak for myself, but I never witnessed the "PC Card" branding - it was all PCMCIA in my neck of the woods, clear through 2000.

clabretro

oh that is awesome! i'll have to keep an eye out if I can find one for cheap haha

Christian Kündig

Looks like there's plenty on ebay (bit overpriced at 50 bucks if you ask me) - this way instead of taking apart an access point you could build one haha

Christian Kündig

I figured it out. it was the ZyWALL 10W, nice illustrations at https://web.archive.org/web/20240425203053/http://download.from.zyxel.ru/download/71f87647-e6b0-4715-8e92-31bd4aaa5901/ZyWALL10W_v3-62_QuickStartGuide.pdf To extend with Wifi, you would buy a ZyAir PC Card (just a regular 802.11b PCMCIA card) - which itself was modular enough that you could chose to replace the antenna sticking out of the PC card for something longer range from the ZyAIR ZyAIR EXT-10x Antenna line, see https://web.archive.org/web/20240425202310/https://www.studerus.ch/de/support/download/57778

clabretro

That'd be really sweet to hunt one down with an actual user-accessible port, I was thinking about that while I took this one apart haha.

Christian Kündig

Maybe this was a modem that could be extended to be a access point? obviously the lack of a proper antenna must have been an issue…

Christian Kündig

I vaguely remembering having a Zyxel access point around 2001-03 which actually had a pcmcia card slot with a card in there exposed (so you could pull it out, but I dont think I knew what for). Cant find it on google though :(

clabretro

haha I have that CIB one and a loose one. haven't decided exactly how I want to mess around with them yet

JesseTheStig

No way! I just saw you flash the game adapter on screen towards the end of the video! The WGA11B, I just picked up 4 of these recently off of ebay to mess around with hahaha

clabretro

Ha very nice! I *think* this one is almost the same as the consumer cards, just with the weird daughter board thing for mounting. Hopefully I'll be able to hunt down old enough drivers (and might need an older computer).

Aaron the Tinkerer

I did this with a U.S. Robotics 802.11b access point back in the early-00s. The card in the access point was the same as a standalone product they sold and it did work with the stock drivers. What a time.