T21 Frankenstein wants to go wireless please help

[lukkbox]

Hi you lovely people

I have recently brought my old T21 back to life with a few bits from ebay and am now wanting to use this beauty downstairs as a spare pc

My internet connection is virgin wireless

Is there a dongle or a pcmcia card i can slip into my T21 to make it connect to the net like my T42 does or am i missing something fundamental here?

Any advice appreciated

Thanks for listening

[lukkbox]

i.e. if i stick one of these

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/NEW-USB-WiFi-Adap ... 4ceb40226d

into a usb2 port thats a pcmcia powered hub on my t21 am i going to be able to find wireless networks, pref my home one, put in my password and surf?

please help me i feel very stupid

[Harryc]

That adapter requires "A-type USB 2.0 Connector". The T21 has USB 1.0 connector. I think you'd be better off with a PCMCIA wireless card.

[lukkbox]

i have a 4 port pcmcia usb2.0 hub in my T21, as i mentioned

so i dont use the usb1.0 port at all

with that in mind, would this work or are their any other hardware issues?

thanks for your response sir

[Harryc]

No other issues that I can see.

[lukkbox]

You are the man!

I shall shed some hard earned £££ right now

Whilst some may think using a T21 in the kitchen for recipes is sacriledge i consider it to be a worthy use of a fine machine!

[lukkbox]

***UPDATE***

Ok i received the wifi dongle mentioned above

1. inserted driver cd and began installation

2. after install finished i inserted the dongle into my usb2 slot in the pcmcia bay

3. greeted by a brief message along the lines of "WLAN card not found" or something similar, didint have time to write it down before i was greeted by the BSOD :O

4. T21 is now dead and when i attempt to boot it up i am greeted by the message:-

Intel (R) boot agent version 4.0.17
Copyright (C) 1997-2001, intel corporation
PXE-E61: media test failure, check cable
PXE-M0F: exiting intel PXE ROM
Operating system not found


FOOOOK!

whats my best plan of action from here then guys n gals?

has this turned my beloved T21 into a rather expensive yet stylish doorstop?

any help greatly appreciated, bit stuck here, awaiting your response

thanks for your time

[Harryc]

I think I'll let someone else help you here because my first bit of advice didn't work out well. I can tell you that the boot message indicates that whatever transpired after or during the BSOD hammered your hard drives boot record. The BIOS does not see a valid OS. I have some ideas if you want to hear them ..

[lukkbox]

i'm all ears harry

never encountered this particular problem before so really looking for a first step

is it salvageable? can i just reload xp on it?

or is it worse news than that?

:S

oddly enough it used to boot into the windows loading screen then die, that was yesterday, now it just goes into the dos message

hilp! lol

[Harryc]

• 1. Restart your computer with the Windows XP Setup disk in the CDROM drive.
  2. If you are prompted to press a key to start the computer from CDROM, do so quickly. Otherwise it may try to boot from the hard drive.
  3. After a few minutes, you'll see a prompt to press the R key to start the Recovery Console.
  4. When Recovery Console starts, it will prompt you to enter a number corresponding to the Windows XP installation that you need to repair. In most cases, you'll enter "1" (which will be the only choice). If you press ENTER without typing a number, Recovery Console will quit and restart your computer.
  5. Enter your Administrator password. If you don't enter the correct password, you cannot continue.
  6. At the Recovery Console command prompt, type fixmbr and then verify that you want to proceed.

The first time you boot up after running fixmbr, go directly into safemode;

• 1. Restart the computer. If you are already in Windows, you can do this from the Windows Start menu, go to Turn off computer and click Restart.
  2. As the computer restarts, watch for a progress bar at the bottom of the screen. press F8 about once every second.
  3. Immediately press F8 before the progress bar reaches the right side of the screen.
  4. From the Windows Start-up menu, highlight Safe Mode and press Enter.
  5. Wait for your desktop to appear, and then make the necessary repairs (for example, uninstall programs or devices).
  6. When the repairs are done, restart the computer, and allow it to boot normally.

When you are in safe mode, go into control panel, add remove programs and remove the driver/software for the USB dongle. Reboot.

If the machine now works, ship the dongle back to it's owner with a nastygram about how it is a piece of feces (not the word I was thinking of), and mention that you'd like your money back.

Note: In the interest of time I copied the above steps for fixmbr and safe mode from a Google search.

[lukkbox]

thanks a lot for that info harry

gonna try it all as soon as i find one of my xp cd's

just moved house so everything in boxes, conveniently lol

will report back with results

thanks again!

[lukkbox]

**UPDATE**

Got my xp cd, stuck it in the drive and pressed f12 to boot from cd

selected atapi drive, hit enter, waited half hour

nothing, dead lol

luckily i found an old 6gb drive i used to use in that machine and that has xp on it and seems to work fine so im guessing its just something on the old drive

is there something i can do to salvage the old drive?

or is it best to just throw it in the bin and forget about the whole incident? lol

sweet relief when this thing booted into xp i can tell you! lol

[Harryc]

Well, you can run any diagnostic available for which you have the means to run the media. PC-Doctor is a good one but for a T21 I believe you need a diskette drive. IIRC Ray and a couple of other members were messing with building a CD iso for it, but I didn't followup to see how far that got. You can also go to the hard drive manufacturers website and download their diagnostic. Either way you'll need to figure out a way to attach the old drive to a computer. Either by USB to IDE adapter cable, or via an enclosure, or by reinstalling it into the T21 hard drive bay.

[lukkbox]

ok thanks harrry and thanks for sticking with me on this one

it's a very old drive anyways so i think it's past it's best and probably better off in the skip tbh

am seriously glad i didint install it onto my T42 first though! lol

we live and we learn

anyone want to buy a wifi dongle?

it's a good one honest lol

[rkawakami]

The PC Doctor for DOS .ISO image I host is for all T2x systems and is available here:

http://www.kawakami-ca.com/ibm_t2x/ibm_t22_pcdiag.iso

You will need a program that properly handles CD image files (.ISO). Once you have burned the disk, boot it and press the Enter key when prompted (it thinks it's loading floppy disks). When you get to the main menu, click on the Diagnostics heading and then select the Fixed Disks tests. There's diagnostics for the hard disk controller, as well as some sector reading tests.

As an aside, this .ISO file was provided by somebody else a few years ago on another (now defunct) web site. I've been hosting it since then and have been trying to figure out how to duplicate the way it was created, without any success.

ref: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=27129

[lukkbox]

The PC Doctor for DOS .ISO image I host is for all T2x systems and is available here:

http://www.kawakami-ca.com/ibm_t2x/ibm_t22_pcdiag.iso

You will need a program that properly handles CD image files (.ISO). Once you have burned the disk, boot it and press the Enter key when prompted (it thinks it's loading floppy disks). When you get to the main menu, click on the Diagnostics heading and then select the Fixed Disks tests. There's diagnostics for the hard disk controller, as well as some sector reading tests.

As an aside, this .ISO file was provided by somebody else a few years ago on another (now defunct) web site. I've been hosting it since then and have been trying to figure out how to duplicate the way it was created, without any success.

ref: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=27129

hi ray

thanks for that mate i will definately get meself a copy for future use but i think im going to put that old HD in the bin, it didint have anything important on it, i never keep important stuff on my drives, for just this reason lol

as a sidenote, i am still trying to connect my T21 wirelessly but have a few questions if anyone can help

i have an O2 dongle that i use to connect the T21 to the web, but i want to connect it through my home wifi router which is virgin media

when i put the O2 dongle into my T42 i not only see O2 connection but also all the surrounding connections

but on my T21 i only see the O2 connection, no others

can anyone tell me what i need to do to find my home network through the O2 dongle please?

does any of that make sense lol?

please help

[rkawakami]

No idea at the moment. O2 seems to be Oxygen, a mobile phone service in the UK, yes? And they offer a WiFi USB stick? If so, then you might try giving their support service a call/email. I don't have any experience with a company-branded WiFi solution.

ref: http://www.o2.co.uk/support

[lukkbox]

No idea at the moment. O2 seems to be Oxygen, a mobile phone service in the UK, yes? And they offer a WiFi USB stick? If so, then you might try giving their support service a call/email. I don't have any experience with a company-branded WiFi solution.

ref: http://www.o2.co.uk/support

hi ray!

great news man!

i threw the old HD in the bin and forgodaboudit

kept me other one in there, did a bit of research, found the right driver for the 802.11 b/g wifi dongle and plugged it into my pcmcia usb2 adaptor thats powered off the ps2 mouse input port

and

im writing this to you wirelessly on my T21 right now!

hallelujah!

must of just been a problem with the old drive

thanks ever so much for sticking with me mate i now have a T21 with Usb2 and Wifi! WOOOT!

job done

[Harryc]