Thinkpads Forum

Hello,
I've just bought a used TP 570 as my first Laptop. I don't have much experience with laptop expansion cards. I am planning to by a wireless card to connect the 570 to my Belkin 125MB Highspeed home networking router. I am considering one of the following:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... 88628&rd=1

or

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... 64649&rd=1

or a USB stick like:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... 47381&rd=1

I am a bit reluctant about the USB stick as the 570's USB port is rather deep inside a slanted plastic pannel on the side of its body. I could not fit my USB stick drive in to it. So, I'm wondering if the USB Wireless Adapter will fit in there or not. I don't want to drag the wired extension around with me.

Another concern is wheather the PCMCIA Wireless Adapter will fit and run in the old notebook. The manual says the PC card slot supports the following types of cards:
PC Card (Type I, Type II, and Type III), CardBus Card and Zoomed Video (ZV).

As fas as I can gather, the network cards I have selected have a CardBus interface (I don't know if there is any issues about 16 or 32 bit). So would they run in my 570?

Thanks in advance for any help or information. Also another thing. Is there any dedicated website/forum/board for the 570? Thanks again.

Dmarook

I have used pcmcia wireless adapters in a 570 before and they worked fine. I would be nervous about bumping the USB wireless adapter and breaking the USB port. The pcmcia would stick out less and be stronger.

I use a Netgear 802.11b Wireless Pc Card MA521. I don't have a network but it works fine in hotels. Since there is no CDROM drive, I downloaded the Netgear drivers.

Either of the PC card solutions will work just fine in the 570, along with the USB device.

BTW, the PC card ports on the 570 ARE cardbus (32BIT) enabled. The type of card in the port's description refers to the thickness of the card, with Type I being the thinnest and Type III the thickest.

Regards,

James

Thanks for all the help. I think I will go for one of the PC cards.