Network cards and Win98SE

I have tried for two days to get wireless networking running on my old PC under Win 98SE, so I can use PUTR without a separate partition or boot. XP is on an 8.4 GB drive. 98SE is on an older 540 MB drive. There are two network cards (a Netgear WPN311 with Atheros chipset, and an Encore ENWLI-G2 with Realtek 8185 chip) and neither will work with Win98SE. I have tried the manufacturer's drivers, Atheros drivers, Realtek drivers... none of it works. The Realtek driver installs but gives a fault in RUNDLL32. Netgear's website claims that the WPN311 can run under 98SE and later. Some sources for that driver package say it starts with XP. Although I would tend to believe the manufacturer... The same Netgear card in the same motherboard was working correctly with the XP drive. I even did a fresh install of 98SE. Then installed the WPN311 software, then the card. Windows says the card is installed and working properly. But the Netgear utility won't run (hangs, Task Manager showing wlancfg5 not responding). That's usually because it can't see the card. Searching the net including various forums from years ago hasn't helped. So I'm about to give up. Wasted enough hours on this. Back to XP with a DOS partition for running PUTR. Unless someone has a better idea :) thanks Charles