Internal wifi miniPCI car compatible with ~9 year old dell laptop?

[volvodude101]

Hey,
I have a dell laptop (inspiron 5000) made in the year 2000 which has no internal wifi card. I have a PCMCIA card which I use, but an internal one would be better. I have a frend who has a newer dell laptop, around 2006 I believe, which the fan went on and it cooked itself. He says he will sell the parts to me, which would include the internal WLAN card. I am wondering if it would be compatible with my old laptop, as I have heard you can ruin your motherboard by using hardware not designed for your specific model. Any help is greatly appreciated!

By the way, the hard drive from one laptop is compatible with another pretty much guarenteed, right? I have never had problems in this regard in the past, but my old laptop seems to have bad luck, and I will have to live with it for a while before I can get a new one, so I would like more than 20 GB of space. Thanks again

[Fruss Tray Ted]

Your chances are slim to none. I went to the Dell site and looked for drivers (for 98, ME, 2K and XP) and also an opening on the case to put the mini pci wireless card in and lastly a switch on it to power the card on or off. I found nothing, sorry.

Stick to the external.

[volvodude101]

do you think it is worth a try? i just don't want to ruin my motherboard...

[mjc]

In a word..NO.

[Fruss Tray Ted]

You can`t connect it if there`s nothing there.

My older Toshiba had an internal bay and an external switch (with LED) PLUS the wiring (power and interface connector) was in the bay. All I had to do was install it and then load the drivers.

I doubt your`s has any of this or I would have found something referring to it and I would have been able to see the switch somewhere on the outside of the case. There is absolutely no mention of wireless for that model, I looked hard and came up blank.

The internal wireless cards are about 1/2 the size of a playing card and the connector slot is a little wider than an SD card slot. If you can find where the connector is on yours, then it will probably work but you won`t be able to make one if it doesn`t already have it.

The 802.11 standard may have started in 1997 but it was in Sept of 1999 before it began to be put into consumer products so this alone is enough reason to think your circa 2000 notebook probably didn`t have it available so the motherboard would be likely to not have the provisions. Had that laptop been as little as one year newer the chances would more than double that it would be capable.

With that model, the modem AND ethernet capabilities were optional accessories. I seriously doubt wireless was even considered.

[volvodude101]

Ok thanks guys, well at least I can use the hard drive...
by the way again...my friend says the fan went on his laptop and it cooked itself, but I have heard laptops automatically turn themselves off when the temp gets too high, perhaps this laptop isn't as dead as he says?

[boucbaz]

It should start after cool up. Otherwise good bye. You cannot insert a wifi card in this one. Your old pc is using IDE drive, I am not sure on the other one cause you don't say the model. Go to dell.com. or http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/pblan/

[boucbaz]

I'm sorry about the link, should read hxxp://support...../pblan/.
If this is the way on this site? Some site, you cannot attach and address, right or not?
Again sorry if a made a mistake.

[risk_reversal]

Although I would echo the comments already made above in respect of new hardware potentially harming you laptop, there is perhaps some info which I can provide.

One of my children uses my old Dell laptop, C600 2001 build. Similarly to yours it has no dedicated internal mini wifi card. To connect to the internet I have a PCMCIA card [well cardbus actually since the PCMCIA slots are 32 and not 16 bit].

About a year ago I was upgrading her PCMCIA card from WEP to WPA and went through exhaustive research. One of the aspects I looked at closely was in respect of an internal wifi card.

I discovered that it is possible to have an internal wifi card. The C600 only has one mini pcmcia slot which is occupied by the NIC/Modem card and in order to have internal wifi, this card must firstly be removed.

The Dell truemobile wifi series 13xx, 14xx [broadcom chipset] will work from the post [Dell & other forums] that I read of users having successfully upgraded. I did find the drivers for the C600 in respect of this/these cards on the Dell website.

I understand that the C600 and Inspiron 5000 share quite a lot on common and believe that what applies to the C600 goes for the Inspiron 5000. I would also guess that the Inspiron 5000 also has one mini pcmcia slot which is currently occupied by the NIC/modem card.

The hardware requirement once the wifi card is installed is that it requires an aerial. The internal wifi card has 2 connectors on it to this end. So your laptop must have the aerial in it which would connect to these. On my Dell C600 the aerial wires are in and run basically alongside the speaker wires.

To cut a long story short. I decided against this for several reasons. Firstly, I did not want to sacrifice the NIC. Secondly, I was not sure what sort of wireless signal I would get. Thirdly, the cooling on the C600 is poor and I did not want another internal component adding yet another source of heat.

Sorry about the long post but at least it provides some colour to your question.

Good Luck

[volvodude101]

I think its an inspiron 1525, but he hasn't brought it to school for a longt time so I can't remember...

[volvodude101]

risk reversal, thanks for the info. is c600 a latitude of inspiron?

[volvodude101]

OK he has brought it to school and it turns on for a second but then turns off because the fan is dead...what should I do?

[risk_reversal]

risk reversal, thanks for the info. is c600 a latitude of inspiron?

The C600 is a Latitude

OK he has brought it to school and it turns on for a second but then turns off because the fan is dead...what should I do?

Well trouble shooting laptops is not simple. If you know for sure that the cpu fan is the cause of the trouble, you could open her up and replace the fan. Dell manuals are pretty good but opening them up can sometimes be a bit tricky.

If you are still merely looking at the wifi card, then I reckon it should be fine ie working but you need to unscrew a panel under the laptop and note the model number in the first instance to see if it is compatible with yours.

Good Luck

[volvodude101]

I found the wifi card and it has a different plug it fits in, about a third the size of the plug on my old beater. I am probably going to give it back to the kid, because I dont know if I feel like fixing this thing when I could get a decent usd one online. Unless there is a relatively easy way to fix the fan. Thanks for your help though