Thought I'd give an update on the above.

Thanks to another board member I obtained a further 16MB of memory (=32MB total) and so managed to install OS 8.6 and 9.04 on separate partitions. The orinoco 7.2 drivers meant the Dell 1150 card was correctly detected and was able to connect to my WRT54G router, running tomato, in wireless 'b' mode. I had to manually set the IP4 settings - DHCP wouldn't work for some reason. Still couldn't get to net browsing working though - so that's a work on.

I did finally manage to get the 3com etherlink III card (3C589D-Combo 10BaseT-Coax) working. Again, DHCP wouldn't connect, but using manual settings, finally got the ol' girl online!