PCMCIA - 32bit or 16bit?

Ok, first off, I know little about the specifics of laptops, and less about old laptops. However, I wanted a cheapo laptop that I could abuse by throwing it in my bag and taking with me to places like the library and work. So I bought a cheap one off ebay, and after installing a lightweight linux distro on it (DSL), it runs like the wind. However, I want to be able to hook it up to the network at work - but do not have an ethernet port.

So, I want to get a PCMCIA card with an ethernet port on it. The specs of the laptop can be found here. The important info (I think) is this:

PC Cards
PC Card controller Texas Instruments PCI 1131 CardBus controller
PC Card connectors 2 (type I or type II cards can be used in any combination; type III cards can be used only in the bottom connector).*
PC Card connector size 68 pins
Cards supported 3.3-V and 5-V
Bus type PCI
Bus speed 33 MHz
Data width:
PCMCIA
16 bits
CardBus
32 bits
* On systems using Microsoft Windows 95 or Windows 98 operating systems, a zoom video card can be used only in the top connector. (The Windows NT 4.0 operating system does not support zoom video.)

Click to expand...

Now, does this mean I can only use a 16bit PCMCIA card, or that I can use a 32 or 16bit? And what on earth is a card bus? I don't really know what it is that I need to be looking at, and as I'm trying to do it on the cheap, I want to get it right. (I was going to try doing it via usb->ethernet converter, but I only have one USB port and need to use it regularly).

If someone could point me in the right direction, I would really appreciate it. Also, if someone knew of a card that was able to do both wired and wireless, I may just love you forever

Anyhow, feel free to laugh at my incompetance, but please let me know the answer!

I'm fairly sure that CardBus just means it's 32bit capable. Now the confusing thing is, PC-Card seems to be able to mean either 16 or 32 bit, technically PCMCIA should only refer to 16 bit but is used for both, but CardBus means 32bit. Thankfully I think you've got support for all of them, so you shouldn't have issues.

USB ethernet cards are a bit....meh.. last resort really, a lot of them don't work all that well. Strangely USB wireless dongles seem to be a better standard, though often not as good as a cardbus model.

Sounds like you should be able to use 2x type IIs stacked, but the issue with that is, that wireless cards are more like type II 1/2 since the antenna portion is sometimes thicker, sometimes angled, etc, so is likely to get in the way of the dongle or xjack on the ethernet card.

regards,

Road Warrior

Thanks a lot RoadWarrior - exactly the kind of detailed answer I was after.

Now, to further my investigations, i stumbled across these PCMCIA cards that can be used for GPRS net access. As I am currently living for another 10months or so in a place without even a phone line, I think this may be a potential option. However, I do not know how these things hold up to real-world use, nor where to get them "cheaply".