PCMCIA slots intermittently malfunctioning - T23 (2647-4MU)

[sparrowhawk]

Greetings all! My first post... and I hope it is a good one.

I have a used T23. Win2000, SP3.

For the longest time, I hated my WIFI PCMCIA card because the connection was so sloooooow slow.

Someone told me to get Netstumbler to check how well the laptop was "hearing" the signal. Strange... every .5 seconds it showed a connection, then not a connection. Quickly flipping back and forth, on and off. Sometimes it would just quit completely for a few minutes. I was connecting at a speed equivalent to a 14.4 modem.

A different brand of wifi card had the same problem. Tried to blame my TCP/IP, but LAN worked, same for a USB-1 wifi device that I bought.

A few months ago, I got a PCMCIA card which had built-in flash memory. Dang, but uploading just a few megs of info on on that card was sloooow. Didn't think much of it at the time...

Then around the same time period, I got a PCMCIA card featuring a USB2 and firewire combo. Tried to use it to connect an external DVD drive to the laptop. Not very efficient... Tried a different slot later. Still slooooow to no connection.

Just in the last few days, I connected all these incidents together.
DUH!
The PCMCIA function is screwy in my T23! Not my wifi cards!

So how to fix the screwy PCMCIA function in my t23?

Someone told me to update the BIOS... but I ain't gonna touch that unless I have to. Sounds like something that can cause other problems. (Yeah, I've been around computers for awhile)

Anyone have any ideas to help?