Wireless Card Not Reconized By Notebook

My Toshiba Satellite Pro 440 CDT (8 years old) will not reconize a wireless PCM card in either of it's PCMCIA slots (which both work fine using Etherlink lll cards). I have tried both Netgear and Belkin's products. The software and drivers load with no errors but both slots show "empty" using Control Panel's PCMCIA. My OS is Win 98. Tech help from both vendors indicate "comatibility issues" due to the computers age. I visited Toshiba's web page and didn't see anything specific but looked into a bios update for model 440 CDT. I downloaded the specific zip-file but the models indicated were Satellite 5105-series. I'm afraid to load this bios.
Question(1): Is there anything practical that can be done so the plug-in will be reconized?
Question(2): Is that downloaded bios safe to install?

 

Since no one replied yet, let me put in my $0.02:
Since the laptop is 8 years old, it is highly possible that it could not support the card in question and if a BIOS upgrade is the only cure (which makes sense), then you would have to do so....there are no workarounds or practical subs for it that I know of.

Second question, if you downloaded the BIOS update from your laptop/mobo manufacturer's web site, it should be safe.