Laptop PCI in desktop slot?

timothyb89

timothyb89

New Member
I recently ordered a wireless PCI card off eBay, and today, when I got it, I discovered that it wouldn't quite fit in my desktop's motherboard. It was about that time that I realized I got an internal laptop wireless card.
I know there's a number of adapters to fix this type of problem out there, but maybe someone here can point me to one?
I tried looking around myself but I could only find PCMCIA adapters...
 
MiniPCI? I have seen a couple miniPCI to PCI converters, but I suspect it'd be cheaper to just buy a whole new card. Besides the converter, you also need antennas for that laptop card...
 
Confirm something? Like what? First off that motherboard is not a standard ATX. A Dell? Besides not fitting in a standard case, a standard ATX power supply might not work. It might actually destory it. And maybe it's just me, but where is the ATX power connection? And IDE? or PCI connections? Do you have some unpictured riser card that has all that stuff on it?

As for the miniPCI card, again, I found a couple converters searching around. One was 16 euros I beleive which would end up being about $16. I'm sure you could find a cheap wifi card for about that much, and you wouldn't have to get antennas.
 
Well, try to forgive the probably 'stupid questions' :P
I'm not much of a hardware expert, thus the probably simple questions I've been asking lately.

Moving on... I just ordered a riser card and I plan to take a trip to a local computer store to see if they have a mini PCI adapter. If not, I'll get an actual desktop card and see how my old laptop does with the wifi card.

As for the motherboard, its and old Intel (I'm not trying to build a very good computer, as you can probably tell). And for the case... I'm thinking a cardboard box should do the job fairly well :P

A final note: the computer I'm trying to build is no more than me experimenting with PC parts. I've always felt safe in the software area, but I decided it was about time I look into the hardware parts. Hopefully this can explain the non-standard parts :P
 
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