Wireless LAN driver XP WE250

April 6, 2010 4:44 PM

I am looking for a WinXP driver for a wireless lan PCMCIA card. I have searched via google, but alas to no avail. The card has "11M Wireless LAN Card PCMCIA" on the front and The Part number is WE250-IF. One site suggested that it was either a BroMax or a KingsMax card, but I still couldn't find a driver and both companies seem to have vanished. Any suggestions greatly appreciated - Cheers Dren
posted by Dren to computers & internet (6 answers total)

This page suggests that a Linksys WPC11 v2.5 might work. No guarantees, but it might be worth a shot.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 5:00 PM on April 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

If BP's suggestion doesn't work you might try downloading and installing Astra32 as it may give you details of the card's chipset that you can then use to track down a driver.
posted by sockpup at 6:15 PM on April 6, 2010

Both good suggestions, thanks.

I found that BroMax were taken over by CyberTAN, new part number BWE250-I.

The card uses the Prism chipset, however the Linksys driver didn't work.

I have hunted about on Google, but I stil haven't managed to find a driver for XP, oddly there seems to be some for LINUX and OS/2
posted by Dren at 11:01 PM on April 6, 2010

I also found out that card was also rebadged by 'Wistron', however, I couldn't find their driver either. I tried a few drivers from other manufacturers for the prism chipset but nothing worked. At last I found a working link to the Cybertan BWE250 driver on www.driverguide.com (a site I really wouldn't generally recommend). Although the utility software doesn't work, at least the XP driver works fine and the laptop has connected.

Sadly after all that effort the PCMCIA card isn't great, it doesn't seem to have the same range as my Cabletron card, and it also drops out once in a while so maybe there is still a driver problem ? Still that's enough effort spent - it will do fine.

Thanks for taking the trouble to reply with those suggestions :)
posted by Dren at 1:09 AM on April 7, 2010

That card runs such an old standard of wireless that I doubt it would be able to connect to any modern network that has (decent) encryption turned on.
A USB WiFi card with Wireless-G would provide better speeds and security.
posted by ijoyner at 10:51 AM on April 7, 2010

It connects and works OK with my new BT wireless network, the only problems are its lack of range and dropping out once in a while. I wouldn't recommend it, but as I had it spare and an old laptop that I wanted to get online, it's a cheap solution... well if you don't count my time spent getting it running. If someone needed a more robust solution I would recommend just scrapping it and buying a modern card.

Thanks for the suggestions and advice... now, anyone know anything about ancient medallions ? I still have another Q unanswered :)
posted by Dren at 3:24 PM on April 11, 2010