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wifi workarounds?

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sona1111

Experienced Member
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Apr 10, 2010
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Hey people. I am only starting to get used to the pre-USB era, so bear with me.

Basically i have a vintage (or just old, whatever) L40 Sx laptop and i am trying to figure out a way to connect to wifi with it. As i have ream elsewhere, the best bet to connecting to the internet with a computer that cannot accept internal cards is to use the xircom Parallel Ethernet adapter. After a few days of looking it seems that their are no existent parallel WiFi adapters. (well, none that will connect to modern routers) I came up with another idea.

What about using a small, travel size wifi bridge and connecting That to your xircom adapter? This seems like it might work (though i do not know how the configuration would work) But it ruins the point that every wifi bridge i come across Must be plugged in. Their are none that run on batteries.

This boils down simply to this question: Is it possible to tap power from a computers serial or PS/2 port and use it to power a wifi bridge?

thanks for reading.
 
It depends on what the voltage requirements are. The PS/2 will give you 5v, and I wouldn't try to pull more than ~950ma. Serial might be a bit more tricky since there is no set levels. What does the bridge need in terms of power?
 
Its an interesting project for sure, however, i know i would buy the parts on the main part of the diagram from places like radio shack, but where do you get the blank Usb/Serial ports? (with nothing attached)



Thanks.
 
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Take a look at the D-Link DWL-G730AP. it is listed as a wireless pocket router / access point but can be connected to a computer by an ethernet cable and configured as a wireless client to provide wireless connectivity for the computer. It does require a 5V DC power source but the package includes an AC power adapter and a USB power adapter. I don't know how much trouble it would be getting it to work with Win 3.11 but I was able to get it working on a MobilePro 900c running .Net 4.0.
 
Due to the way those devices work it should be no trouble to get it working with Win3x or any other OS for that matter. The worst thing you might run into is that the web browser you're using may not support enough features to configure the device. If that's the case, try Arachne for DOS (more full-featured and modern parser) or just configure it on a new machine and then switch it over to the old one.

I was unaware that those existed and now am quite interested in getting one - lol.
 
Thank you for the replies, but it still comes down to the problem that my laptop-like most other vintage Pcs- HAS NO USB PORTS so we need to get the power from the serial port instead. =P
 
sona1111 said:
Thank you for the replies, but it still comes down to the problem that my laptop-like most other vintage Pcs- HAS NO USB PORTS so we need to get the power from the serial port instead. =P
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I could be wrong, but I suspect you're going to have trouble getting enough power from the serial port. How much current do you need and which other ports are there on the laptop? Don't these Xircom adapters require external power anyway?
 
My Xircom parallel port adapter requires 5V, which one can pull from the PS/2 port if one is available. The laptop I most recently used it on doesn't support external keyboard so I used an old switch/router PSU to power the adapter.
 
USB power is 5V btw, in case nobody made this clear, and so is PS/2 power, so you can wire up an adapter from PS/2 to USB for the sake of power, or wire a new end onto the USB plug if you get the DLINK device mentioned earlier.
 
Well, the Xircom adapter uses the PS/2 port already, and with the possibility of using a mouse too, i dont want to pull too much juice from it. If the serial port can provide the power, i would rather use that.

Can anyone tell me what the blank connectors are called so i can look them up?

thanks.
 
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