Update: Pentium III laptop for $35? Why, I'll take it.

So I went to Best Buy and picked up a new Netgear wireless ethernet card. It looked like it would do the job using the Prism54 drivers which are designed for this chipset. However, installing the card has involved much more than I was willing to get into. Or so I thought…

First I put the card in and checked to see if it auto-configured miraculously. Of course this wasn’t the case, but it was worth a shot. I started looking around for help and saw I needed the Prism54 drivers as stated above. Attempting to install those then yielded an error saying I didn’t have an option in my kernel set correctly (evidently some sort of firmware loading option). I sighed heavily, but wasn’t going to make a big deal out of recompiling my kernel. “I’ll get to know the machine better.” Right. Anyway, I try to find the option in my kernel configuration and there doesn’t appear to be such an option. Oh good.

Time to install a 2.6 kernel. “I was going to do that anyway.” Right. I started filling out the configuration when I realized this was a lost cause because I was simply lowering my chances by configuring my own kernel and not paying much attention to detail.

So now I’m reinstalling Slackware so I don’t have to deal with my mistakes and crossing my fingers. Stay tuned for part 3.