A few general hardware questions (USB Wireless Adapter, Media Card Reader, etc)
 

Just for reference I use Ubuntu 7.10 upgraded all the way back from Dapper.

1. I recently disassembled a computer that had one of those 8 in 1 multimedia card readers. It was connected by a wire to some prongs on the motherboard and I wanted to know if it was possible through any means to get it to work with another computer. Also, would Linux be able to use it?

2. For some time I have been trying to get a USB Wireless G network adapter from Belkin (the F5D7050)to work in Ubuntu. If anyone knows how to get this to work, let me know step by step, especially if it involves compiling anything. I realize that the wireless adapter itself may contain one of several chipsets in it.

3. My final question lies in an old computer that I recently bought for $15 that needed a hard drive. I bought an old hard drive, and tested a newer one that I had at home from an old computer. It is possible that both hard drives are bad, but I was wondering if it's possible for an IDE cable to go bad. From what I know, the computer hasn't been taken apart except for removal of the original hard drive. The computer does work on both the Ubuntu 7.10 Live CD and Damn Small Linux, of course.

3. It is possible that both drives are bad. I assume they are IDE. so make sure the replacement drive jumper configuration is correct, the cable is connected to the drive and motherboard correctly. i.e. red strip at pin 1 and the BIOS is configured to autodetect the drive.

1. Without knowing any details on the computer it is difficult to tell what interface this reader used to connect to the motherboard. I guess it would be USB. If so it would be possible to use with another computer if you built an adapter cable and probably would be usable with linux.

2. Without knowing the chipset you could use ndiswrapper and the windows drivers to configure the wireless adapter.