I am trying to fit an Asus WL-138G card to my 5 year old computer to let it share Broadband with my brand new XP-based machine.

Basically, the Windows 98 machine refuses to detect the PCI card when it is fitted in any of the 4 free slots. The new hardware wizard says there is nothing new. If it helps, the motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-71XE for the AMD 751/756 chipset.

I was told by the vendor that the card should work with Windows 98SE, but has anyone any experience of this? Any other suggestions of what I might be doing wrong when installing the card would be very welcome.

Thanks in advance.

If other PCI cards work in the slots, chances are the card is defunct. Can you test it in another machine, or exchange it? According to the specs, it's supposed to work in any PCI equipped machine.

Thanks for the reply - the card is OK. Someone else has suggested that
the WL-138G card only works with PCI 3.3v motherboards and that mine might just be too old.

Nothing is ever straightforward is it?

Straightforward? With computers? ;>)

I checked two different sites with specs on the card and both stated that the card works in any PCI equipped system. What's that word again, straightforward? ;>)

AndyHurt, at the risk of sounding patronising (without wanting to), have you read the installation instructions that came with the wireless LAN card? Some PCI cards require you to install the drivers or run a setup program BEFORE you fit the card inside the PC. This is particularly likely due to the fact that wireless LAN cards are very new technology and Windows 98 is 7 years old. It might be that Windows can see the card but has no idea of how to work out what it is! Installing the drivers or running the setup program first updates Windows with the information that it needs for the Add New Hardware wizard to understand what it's looking at.

Let us know if that helps

Thanks for your reply and don't worry, I don't feel at all patronised; though maybe a little inadequate. The *very* brief quick start installation instructions, that were all that came with the card, say:

1. Have an experienced person install the ASUS WLAN Card into a free PCI slot. Replace your chasis door, panels, screws, and cables when completed.

2. Turn ON your computer and enter Windows.

3. Windows will automatically detect ......... (no it doesn't)

The system requirements say that Windows 98SE is OK, but all of the screen shots etc. are for XP and don't mention other variants. The ASUS website is very unhelpful compared with say that of Belkin, which solved the XP-SP2 related installation problem for the Bluetooth device I was adding in minutes.

Getting round to your suggestion, yes, I did try to install the driver and utilities first, but without any success. Basically '98 doesn't want to know about the driver as there is no physical device to associate it with (or am I missing something obvious here?). Have always been happier with software than hardware.

This device probably requires a PCI BUS Master slot for proper functioning. Check your bios to ensure the slot it's in is set to PCI Master.

The only options allowed by the BIOS are PCI/PnP and ISA/EISA. Maybe that is the problem?

Is the slot set as PCI/PnP?

The motherboard manual (or the mobo specs) will indicate which slot(s) have MASTER capabilities.

Yes -all slots are set to PCI/PnP and having finally located the chipset manual, I can confirm that all 5 PCI slots have MASTER status. The only other setting to do with PCI is PCI Latency, which can take values between 32 and 248, but which is currently set to the default of 64. I did try (at random) setting it to 128, but it made no difference. Haven't tried other settings.

The other thing I noticed in the chipset manual was that my motherboard is indeed a 3.3V model, so a previously suggested cause of it not working is probably not valid.