my otherwise fine A21p seems to have a dead mini-PCI slot?

[wild_bill]

I recently bought an A21p (2629-HXU) cheap and it runs great, except I cannot get the wireless working. It seems it was originally shipped with a 3com combo card which I think must have powered the wired Ethernet port and the modem, there are two connectors in the card area that are not in use and I figure they are going to the Ethernet port and modem.

Someone had put an intel 2100 wireless card in the port, so went I loaded up a fresh install of XP Pro, I installed the correct Intel 2100 drivers and I get a code 10 - device cannot start error, so I figured, oh well, I remember I have a brand new IBM a/b/g wireless card (73P4301) in my stash from 2004 which should be perfect, so I open it's sealed box, install it, connect the antenna leads, install the drivers from the included CD and get the same code 10 - device cannot start error, (along with the yellow flag on it in Device Manager)

Also, Windows Update does not detect either wireless card for a driver update, so this seems like a BIOS setting, or a physical switch is turned off, or else the mini-PCI is just turned off or dead. I tried reversing the white and black antenna leads with no effect (PS - is black or white considered "MAIN"?)

I could not hook up the main Ethernet wired port because as stated earlier, it seems that port was powered by the original 3com mini PCI combo card rather than Ethernet being built on the system board so I guess this computer now has no hardwired Ethernet.

So in order to download all of the Windows updates to the XP pro SP3 disc, I set up internet the only other way I could think of, with a Zonet USB external a/b/g antenna unit and all of the Windows Updates were installed using that which works fine.

I don't think the mini-PCI wireless issues are 1802 error problems, since USB wireless works and i never got an 1802 error. - And I feel like the brand new wireless card from IBM and likely the Intel card as well are good functional cards.

so what would be the cause of the mini-PCI card slot to not be working? - everything else on this new to me laptop seems to work great, a full install of XP Pro was uneventful and everything else installed great. Am I missing something silly that would have the mini-PCI board turned off, like a BIOS setting or Fn key or something?