Laptops :: PCMCIA cards not 'noticed' by Compaq Armada
How about a quick ebay search?
edit: crud, ebay link won't work. D-Link DWL 650 16 bit is the card I found there
So after much searching, and not finding a 16-bit PCMCIA to USB card, I found a few web pages which state that they don't exist. A sample statement can be found here. I thought I should write that down for future searchers.
In light of this, I began searching for other possibilities for ancient laptops. If anyone has other ideas, please let me know. Right now I thought of the following:
Serial port to USB: No go, so far. Plenty converting the wrong direction, but I can't find anything so far. Probably for similar reasons that the PCMCIA to USB doesn't work in 16-bit...
LAN to USB: This idea intrigued me, but would require some careful hardware hacking to squeeze into the laptop, and perhaps some software hacking to get it to work? Basic idea: Take a USB server, something like this one or smaller, and squeeze it into the lappy. Problems abound, especially if you were going to run wireless through the USB: PCMCIA to LAN to USB to Wi-Fi doesn't sound very efficient, nor does it sound like I would be able to squeeze that into the lappy. If you have Wi-Fi already, it could be: Wi-Fi to USB. But then you have a weird situation of non-wired hardware in your laptop. Hmmm...
16-bit Wifi cards exist, as do lan and modem cards. Don't give up hope!
Methods of connecting are many; you can have wireless through irda, or wired through serial or parallel, if all you want is a net connection. For Wifi, if you keep searching, you will find one 
Edit: here's one: NETGEAR MA401. It's a Prism2, so it should work out of the box in DSL. Here's a complete list of 16-bit pcmcia wifi cards, along with their Linux status:
http://linux-wless.passys.nl/query_hostif.php?hostif=PCMCIA
Lan to Wlan already exist (and way cheaper then what you're thinking). Like 30~50 bucks. It's called a Wireless Bridge. You can get one the size of a cigarette pack (I have a La Fonera router hacked with DD-WRT [Think super-dsl]) and that one can be hacked to be powered by usb/5v @ 500ma. If you just need wi-fi, this would be the way to go.
No, it's the other way around: I have a PCMCIA slot, I don't have USB. I can get the internet, and I can use CF cards to transfer data, but what I really really want is a USB port on my laptop so I can more easily hook up other devices. Goal: USB ports.
I cannot get a PCMCIA to USB adapter, since those are all 32-bit and my laptop only supports 16-bit. I looked into Serial to USB adapters, but those don't exist either (they all adapt the wrong direction). At work I use a USB port over a wireless connection, I could do that except that is a lot of hardware to cram into the laptop! And, at $100, they are expensive as well, see here as an example.
More info: I just found CF to USB, except it is USB 1.1. Better than no USB, but at $150 the cost is too high for me. Here is an example.
I can't really think of any other way to get a USB port on the laptop, so unless someone else has a clever idea I think I may retire this laptop from main use. Maybe use it as a web server or something, I recall someone else on here doing that...
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