The goal is to get my Toshiba Satellite 335CDS laptop running Windows ME connected to WIFI. Giving it the ability to easily browse simple websites and even post online. I don't want to use proxies or a complicated setup to connect to modern sites either. None of this is very secure but it doesn't have to be, it connects to a special open network that only allows one device and shuts off automatically after a period of time.
I bought these new in box D-Link DWL-650 PCMCIA wireless cards to try out. I already know the cardbus one is not compatible but could be used on newer laptops. The other one did work but the connection software did not, it crashed after I opened it. But McAfee Wireless Security 4.1 did work with it to connect.
Now I wanted to try a Netgear MA401 PCMCIA card. The driver also worked no problem but the connection software was not seeing my access point. I updated it to the newer Windows XP version and it connected right away. I liked how simple and fast the Netgear software was so I decided to use this card.
To support the newer HTTPS forced websites I found the browser K-Meleon 1.5.4 that included TLS support but someone patched it with TLS 1.3. You will need the patched version for most websites to work. K-Meleon is pretty fancy, a lot of features like tab support and a really cool up directory button.
For posting online I'm using Notepadd++ to edit HTML which is even better than what I use on my main desktop computer (just the default text editor for Xfce). And then FileZilla to upload to a webserver.