PCMCIA cards and linux

[draigwen]

I've got an incredibly old laptop that I would like to turn into a thin client for my lounge. The problem is that it's got no network connectivity and only a floppy drive. I'm thinking of buying a PCMCIA ethernet card and CD-ROM drive for the machine. But I'm wary of buying something that won't work with Linux.

Has anyone got any recommendations for PCMCIA ethernet cards and/or CD-ROMs that will work with Linux?

Comments

Hi: a few qualifiers -

[faintdreams]

The age of the laptop in question, the hardware specs you have, and the distribution of linux you choose to install make a huge difference here.

I can only give you some helpful links to let you go and discover more based on the two factors above. good luck .

These are two laptop( notebook) specific sites that might help:
http://www.linux-drivers.org/ and specifically http://www.linux-drivers.org/notebooks.html

http://www.tuxmobil.org/pcmcia_linux.html - deals with pcmcia cards specifically.
although tbh if the laptop didn't come with cd-rom as standard it might be a little too old a machine for a beginner at Linux to tackle (you might get old kit incompatibility issues).

Which ever distribution you use (Ubuntu, debian, Susue etc) make sure it's one with an established development community and plenty of documentation.

good luck !

Re: Hi: a few qualifiers -

[draigwen]

Thanks for your response.

The laptop is at least ten years old. It's a 486. I'm not actually a beginner at linux (I've been using it for the past 8 years myself) so I'm quite happy getting stuck into compiling kernel modules, etc. My biggest concern is getting something that isn't compatible with linux in the first place!

Thanks for the links.