Saturday Shenanigans - 2

Well, now to the second part of my weekend shenanigans...

(Here is the short version: today I took apart an old laptop and removed its internal wireless card and antenna, and installed these in my laptop I got back in 2001. Now I have wireless on it! Sweet!)

FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO ARE NOT SATISFIED WITH THE SHORT STORY, HERE IS THE NARRATIVE OF TODAY'S EVENTS, JUST AS THEY HAPPENED...

Back in 2001, I purchased a Dell Inspiron 4000 laptop. I actually got it off of eBay. It was only a week or so old, and the fellow that had purchased it decided that he really wanted something different. So, I was able to get a brand new system for a couple hundred less than what I would have paid directly from Dell.

The Birth Certificate from Dell (yes, I did blur out the service tag number so you couldn't read it and then go on Dell's site and try to find out what's in this system!)

Say what you will about Dell, but I have had no complaints with this system. It came with Windows ME preinstalled, which, even at the time, I was not too keen on. In fact, when the system arrived, I formatted the hard drive and installed Windows 98 on it. After using it for a while, it became apparent that it actually ran BETTER with Windows ME, so I formatted the drive again and started over with ME.

Here is what the ole' girl looks like

I have had that computer for the last 8 years, and have not had one lick of trouble with it. The battery finally went out on it, but it still runs well with the AC adapter. I have run many different versions of Linux on it, and even a BSD or two. Come to think of it, I may have even run OpenSolaris on the ole' girl.

My one beef with it lately has been the lack of wireless. Sure, I could fork out $40 or so for a PC card adapter or even a USB adapter, but come on now, is it really worth it for an 8-year old system?

Let me digress for a moment, because there is another story that ties into this one and will help to explain my day's activities. For quite some time, we have been allowed to do computer returns at our store. This helped us in taking care of the customer, especially if the problem with their computer would normally have required sending their computer back to the manufacturer.

Every once in a while, a laptop would return for which we could get no return to vendor authorization. These would silently sit in our back room, collecting whatever bits of dust they could get their plastic little chassis on. Well, one day I decided to check with my boss and see if there was a chance I could buy the lot of them. He agreed, so that evening I went home with five laptops, in various stages of repair (or disrepair as the case may be).

Well, to shorten the story up a bit, one of the computers was an old built-to-order HP. This thing easily exceeded the bounds of a portable computer and landed squarely in the realm of "luggable" or "budgeable". Since it was missing both its hard drive and AC adaptor, I felt it was the perfect victim...er...specimen, for my project today.

Ok, this isn't MY Inspiron, but, like the earlier picture, it is a brother or sister

This morning I got a curious bug to see if my Inspiron had what is called a mini-PCI port in it. So, I turned it over, got out a handful of trusty screwdrivers, and opened up the access panel on the bottom of the computer. Sure enough, it had a mini-PCI port, but there was currently a card plugged into it. After determining that this was the network card and 56K dial up modem, I had an idea. What if that old luggable HP had a wireless mini-PCI card in it? Could I put that in my Inspiron and make it wireless? Well, with nothing holding me back but fear itself, I began with my "cardectomy".

After unscrewing a countless number of small screws, the old HP began to grudgingly come apart in my hands. I removed the wireless mini-PCI card, only to discover that these little guys use an antenna (basically a set of wires) which snaked its way towards the LCD screen. Not being one to quickly give up (hey, the odds were in my favor), I disassembled the screen and removed it from the laptop chassis. I then extricated the antenna (wires) from behind the LCD screen and voila, I was set.

Here is the same make and model Broadcom wireless card I installed today

I carefully attached the antenna wires to the card and inserted it into my Inspiron. First I tried booting with one of my Linux distros, but the card wasn't recognized, so I installed Windows XP. The old Inspiron should have given up the ghost (hey, she only sports 192MB of RAM and a 10GB hard drive) but she chugged right along, as if nothing out of the ordinary were happening. (Remember, the ole' girl was in my possession and operating as my computer before XP was a gleam in Bill Gates' eye).

Well, downloading the XP driver for that card on my desktop computer, I copied it on a flash drive and installed it on the Inspiron. Just like clockwork, up came the wireless card and I was online. Between the wireless and a good Linux distro (just haven't quite decided yet) this almost decade-old computer has a new lease on life!