Orinoco Gold Card Locks Up My Thinkpad 600

[bill2416]

Hello All

I recently picked up a Proxim Orinoco 11b/g Gold PC Card for my little Thinkpad 600. I was hoping to get an external antenna and extend the range of my wireless access. I have another wireless card (Encore b/g) that works just fine but the range is limited.

The Orinoco says it works with a 300 mhz processor and windows 98 se which is what I have. I have actually intalled (and uninstalled) the drivers and gotten it working several different times, but each time it ultimately causes the machine to lock up at one point or another. It definately will not allow a hot insert of the pc card. The system freezes up right away and both the power light and the network light on the card lightup continuously and the system doesn't seem to "see" the card. If I pop the card out the system will usually continue operating as if nothing had happended.

Sometimes, if I start the machine with the card inserted, the power light on the card will flash on and off and the machine will start normally and I will be able to use the card. Other times both lights will lightup and it will freeze up on the Windows "Welcome" screen and the only thing I can do is hit the power switch.

The card came with Driver Version 3.0.1.6 which as far as I can tell is the most recent version.

At other various points I have gotten Blue Screen Lockups with various errors including:

fatal exception 06 at 0028:00000017

fatal exception 0D at 0028:C00015D7

fatal exception 0E at 0028:C00144A7 in VxD

Some of which seem to be related to Suspending and Resuming, but I'm not sure what I am looking at.

Does anyone have one of these cards running on your Thinkpad 600 or any clue what the problem might be?

Thanks
Bill

[Rob Mayercik]

Well, I can think of a couple of possibilities:

First off, have you any way to test this card and driver in another machine? If it were to work in another computer (even a desktop with a PCMCIA slot), it would at least demonstrate that the hardware and software are all right.

Second, is it possible that something installed on your thinkpad is causing a conflict with this card? Since 98SE isn't as good at Plug-and-Play as XP, you may want to scan through Device Manager and see if there are any potential resource conflicts (tip: if you don't use them, disable things like the serial and parallel ports, and the IR port).

Third, is your installation of 98SE good, and as up to date as you can get it? Maybe a missing patch or hotfix is at the root of the problem. Worse yet, perhaps the installation got corrupted and is messing up a DLL or VSD or something.

Fourth, did you buy new or used? Try checking thier knowledgebase/FAQ/forums for ideas, or (if you bought new) contact their technical support and see what help they might be.

As to the suspend/resume, I never really had much luck with it under 98SE - I found that once I started installing drivers for network devices (both wired and wireless), that functionality stopped working. Since I didn't have a great need for suspending/resuming, I just turn the machine off.


Rob