Connect a laptop at home > Part I - Basic Peer-to-PeerStep 1 - Install the PC Card adapter Here in Step 1, we're going to show how a PC Card adapter can be connected and set up on a laptop. Nearly all laptop computers include a slot for accessories called a PC Card slot (formerly known as PCMCIA slots). PC Card accessories, including network adapters, look like thick credit cards and provide a very simple way to add devices to your laptop. If your laptop doesn't have a PC Card slot, you can still connect your laptop to a home Ethernet network, but you'll have to use a special adapter that connects to the parallel port. We are not going to cover their use in this "how to." Instead, we are going to focus using on a PC Card adapter. For this "how to" we're using an SMC EZ CardBus 10/100. The CardBus in the name indicates that this particular network card provides bus mastering function...meaning it requires less workload from the CPU. It's not an essential feature, but check your laptop features. If its PC Card slots have the CardBus capability, you'll want to look at the extra cost...and advantages...and make your own decision. PC Cards also come in different varieties called Type I, Type II or Type III. Most new PC Cards require either a Type II or Type III, but most laptops should be so equipped. Once you've selected the card you want, you're ready to plug it into the laptop. For this "how to" we're using Windows 95, but Windows 98 is very similar. For Windows 3.11 or earlier, you'll need software that usually comes with the PC Card in order to "activate" the PC Card slot. In Windows 95, the slot most likely is already active. To check go to Start > Settings > Control Panels and look for a PC Card icon and description. If you have "details" selected in your window view, it should look like this:
If you don't see the icon and your laptop has one or more PC Card slots, you'll need to run the Add New Hardware wizard...also found in control panels. This should automatically detect the PC Card slot and install the icon in your control panel. Once the icon is in place, you only need to insert the PC Card and Windows 95/98 should automatically detect it. One of the advantages of PC Card slots, is that you can insert the card with the laptop running. Our test laptop, a Compaq 7800 has two slots. Simply plug the PC Card adapter into one of your slots.
Immediately after you insert the card, Windows 95 will pop up the New Hardware Found dialog box and then present with you the Update Device Driver Wizard. If you have a floppy disk or CD ROM supplied with the card, insert it into the laptop at this point. Click Next. The Wizard should find the driver and indicate that in the dialog box. If not, click on the Other Locations button and point the dialog box to where it can find the driver disk or CD supplied with the card. It's a good idea BEFORE doing any of this to read any instructions or readme files included on the disk to see where the files are located for the operating system you are using. Once the Wizard indicates the proper card, simply select finish. The Wizard likely will ask for the Windows 95 installation CD ROM so make sure to have it ready. Because your laptop is likely to have some networking configurations already installed for your work network, you may get the following dialog box. "This DHCP Client was unable to obtain an IP network address from a DHCP server. Do you want to see future DHCP messages?" Click No. (What this means by the way, is that your network at work automatically assigns a TCP/IP address to your computer from a special server. Since you don't have this server at home, you get the previous message. However, as you read on you'll discover that we deliberately will NOT use TCP/IP on our home network in this setup (we'll leave that for Part II of this Connect Your Laptop at Home how to)). That's it. The card should be operating properly. To make sure, we can click on Start > Settings > Control Panel and double clicking on System. Then click on the Device Manager tab and select on the Network Adapters section. You should see the card you just installed listed and there should be no yellow exclamation marks or red "no" signs (like no smoking signs). If there is, you may have a conflict with other hardware in your computer, but not necessarily network hardware. It could be a sound card or video card conflict. Check your card documentation to work through a diagnostic to discover the problem. Most likely, you won't have any conflicts and your network adapter list will look something like this:
To complete the hardware installation, most PC Cards have a small adapter, or dongle, that connects to the PC Card and then has a jack to accept an RJ-45 plug from a twisted pair cable and/or a BNC jack to accept a thin net or coax cable connector. Our SMC card only included the RJ-45 jack and since we are using twisted pair cables and a hub that works just great. Connect the dongle to the PC Card and insert one end of your network cable to the dongle as shown below
Connect the other end to the network hub that will have one or more cables from other computers on your home network. So, once the card is installed, we know it is working properly according to the Device Manager and all other hardware is ready, we can move on to Step 2.
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