What wifi cards fit fully inside a (dual) PCMCIA slot?

Question

Teh background and information (bonus funny story)
So I was poking my 9 year old laptop recently and amazingly found that via a USB wifi dongle I'd completely forgotten about for a few months, I could get wifi on said laptop, even over USB 1.1.
Then I tried to figure out how to shove the dongle inside my laptop and things kinda went south from there at about 2.7 billion miles a second.
Everything just went *flooooop* when I accidentally put the little PCB back inside the dongle the wrong way after taking it out to try and fit it inside a space inside the laptop; this wasn't problem, except I couldn't see the little blue LED. So I hastily took the board out to flip it over and I think I touched the it while doing so for the first and only fatal time...
I also tried to craft a cardboard plug to fit in the USB port on the laptop, and may have pushed the little contacts into the plastic recesses in the port a bit too much; this is unlikely to be the problem because I very carefully re-bent the contacts out again, and my flash disk works every time I plug it in, sooo... probably not that.
Anyway, now I know how to put my laptop back together again *doesn't say anything about the small collection of screws he has no idea what to do with*
Right now, my USB dongle kinda works but really sporadically; it mostly doesn't work at all. It fails anywhere between the kernel thinking the "USB cable is bad" (</quote>) to fully detecting and configuring the dongle (under either an rtl8187 or ndiswrapper-powered driver), but not letting me connect to any SSIDs. I typically have to unplug the thing and shove it back in in the previous case, or give up in the latter, which I've no idea how to get around, until it feels like connecting again (perhaps after cooling down?).
So I want to try a PCMCIA type card because...
- I can't use my flash disk without a hub right now, since the dongle would occupy the only port available (although linux does say there's a 2 port hub inside >.>).
- The port has a cute little flap over it that I don't want to remove, and it causes my USB dongle to not be able to go in properly unless I use a cable
- I'm all like jittery about the USB port possibly not working =P
I've found it impossible to find any sort of specification sheet for this box so I have no idea what kind of PCMCIA port it has, but I'd imagine type #1 if that's of any help. The laptop itself is a Toshiba Satellite 2540CDS also.
Teh point
I want to get away from the whole "vulnerable peripheral sticking out of side of laptop" thing and get a PCMCIA card that fits fully inside a laptop's PCMCIA slot, preferably without needing to use an external antenna.
I don't mind if the card takes up the space of the upper slot as well; I'm not using that one (and doubt I will soon).
I've been told that cards like this exist, but (of course) I only want one that is known to work with Linux, or at least one that should theoretically work (ie because it uses a supported chipset), and one that includes an internal antenna.
Although an antenna sticking out the side sounds like it'd look cool, so I might be okay with that once I see what it'd look like
So what do you recommend?
-dav7
Last edited by dav7 (2008-11-03 05:28:43)

Answer 1

Hi Steve
Well, I cant give you proper answer how you can exactly remove the PCMCIA slot.
There are many screws and in my knowledge you have to remove all covers and screw which are placed at the bottom of the unit and inside under the keyboard.
Please check this unit precise. Maybe you have overlooked some screws.
But if it impossible to remove this PCMCIA slot from the unit I recommend to ask the service partner for a detailed instruction.
Good luck
Bye