Intel PRO/Wireless 2011B LAN CF Card on J720 HPC2000

OK guys, I got it to work. The drivers from www.wince-devel.org didn't work exactly the best, though they did recognize the card better than the stock Intel drivers. The drivers I got from cmonex worked though the GUI was still formatted for PPC screen. The best drivers with the best software have been from Symbol. It seems that the software is almost identical to the Intel drivers but it recognizes that the card is CF and loads the firmware and such. So that has been taken care of. The problem I run into now (which can be easily resolved) is that the card has an excruciatingly short range ~7 feet with a Cisco Aironet AP.

Steps to get the card to work:
1. Copy dll files to \Windows directory (aygshell.dll, doclist.dll, gx.dll, mfcce300.dll, cewdm.dll, netwlan.dll, trans.dll)
2. Download and install the Symbol Spectrum 24 drivers ftp://symstore.longisland.com/Symstore/exe/downloads/NetworkerSetupHPC2000a.exe
3. Enjoy!

Don't know if all the dll files are required but I know that after copying them all over and installing the Symbol software that it worked, despite the short range of the card. Thanks guys for the help and I hope that anyone else naive enough to purchase this card will find their answers faster than I did.

EDIT: Install the Intel drivers before the Symbol drivers. It will complain about it not being the right OS but continue. Otherwise, the Symbol software will start and immediately stop. ALL the dll files are necessary and I can zip them for easy download. Shortly after I will upload my findings to the HCL.

Edited by cmdrkeen 2006-10-23 9:02 PM

awww, mfcce300.dll, you're likely to kill a lot of hpc apps with this.

check the size of this mfcce300.dll please. then i can tell you how to proceed not to break any software.

also tell the size of aygshell.dll ... for future ppc app compatibility

btw, whats this cewdm.dll, netwlan.dll, trans.dll? where did you get them?

and sorry but the HCL will not host hacked stuff. still, i do suggest you submit a HCL entry telling the admins that this card needs hacking

I did not hack anything. I got the dll files in question from here http://www.wince-devel.org/wince/intel-2011b-wince211-drivers.tar.gz
Sadly cmonex, the files I got from you did not help as much as needed but they gave me a good point to start with and I appreciate the help. I have prepared a zip file containing (unmodified) software necessary to get the card working. I will upload when I get the chance.

EDIT: The zip file is too large for the BBS. PM me and I will email the files.

Edited by cmdrkeen 2006-10-23 9:23 PM

i was serious about the MFC issue, you will probably have serious problems later (unless you're as lucky as never needing any mfc hpc2000 programs). is your mfcce300.dll larger than 400kbyte? then you will need additional editing.

Hello. From what I can tell, the Intel Prowireless CF cards are the same card as the older Socket and Symbol Wireless CF cards. It seems both versions have much newer and less crappy drivers than this really old Intel driver.

I just tried the Intel PRO/Wireless 2011B LAN CF driver from the Intel site and it seems to work fine with my Symbol Wireless Networker CF WiFi card. The only problem is that the Intel version of the driver is CRAP! Its so old it does not even support any kind of encryption! :0

You can download much newer and nicer drivers from the Symbol/Socket support sites for these cards. They even have native Handheld PC 2000 drivers that are much better than that really crappy, old Pocket PC 2000 driver on the Intel site. While the native HPC2000 drivers are better than the crappy Intel ones and support WEP encryption, etc... they are still lacking a bit in my opinion. The Handheld PC 2000 and Pocket PC 2000 versions of the driver from both Symbol and Socket do not have any kind of Network scanning functionality. You need to type in the SSID manually. They also don't work with PocketWinc and that is the only program that even supports these cards. That is why I suggest you use the Pocket PC 2002 version of the driver/config app on ARM devices. (on MIPS there is no choice) This version of the driver is actually much nicer than any of them. It has built in network scanning, WEP support, and all the other essentials you expect from a Wifi card's companion software. And best of all, it works with PocketWinc so if you don't like the simple built in SSID scanner, you can use a much nicer 3rd party app. There is a downside to using it, though. You need to modify the Wifi config program so it calls a renamed version of the Pocket PC MFCCE300.dll or it will conflict with the HPC2000 version of this DLL because they both have the same name. You will also need iphlpapi.dll to use the configuration program on the Jonrada 720 but if you have a J728, you should already have this in your device's ROM. Finally, you will need to use Winwatch or Hou Ming's newest Aygshell.dll to see all of the available options because they are designed for 240x320 screens and will be but off on a HVGA Jornada.

The newest version of the Pocket PC 2002 driver seems to be Socket's version. So get that one from their site below. If you want the simpler Handheld PC 2000 one, you can get that from either vendor.

Symbol's Support area for this card is here:
http://www.symbol.com/legacy_downloads/documentation_drivers.html

Socket's is here:
http://www.socketcom.com/support/support_discontinued.asp?Type=WiFi

All of the dlls you will need along with a pre-hacked PocketWinc may be found on cmonex's site here: http://izemize.fw.hu/hpc.php

However, since your card is not sold by Socket or Symbol, you will need to do one extra step so that Windows CE will load the driver for you and recognize your card.

It is likely that the PNPID (Plug and Play ID) if your card is different from the Symbol/Socket version and so you will need to manually add your card's PNPID to the registry so that WinCE will know to load the driver when you insert your card. To make this easier for you, I have attached a .REG file with the needed PNPIDs to this post. To import it into your device's registry, you will need to first download a copy of Tascal Regedit (HPC) from here:
http://www.hpcfactor.com/support/cesd/s/0082.asp

After TRE is installed, go to View>Settings, click the "Set" button and exit TRE. Now just run the .reg file and hopefully your card will now be detected when you insert it in your device!

Hopefully this will work for you...so Happy WiFi-ing!

Edited by TFGBD 2006-10-23 10:50 PM




Attachments
----------------
Intel Prowireless 2011B CF PNPID.zip (0KB - 2 downloads)

mmm nice desc, i guess that means you can drop the intel driver installation step then...?

I will do a hard reset and test. If it works I will let you guys know.

Yep.

All i can seem to get from the registry file is a syntax error...it's starting to seem as if my method works better. Also, I had no issues with WEP using my method.

As ever, happy to be wrong. Will these drivers work on the PCMCIA version of the 2011B card? That would be great, as the CF cards (like my Prism based Hawking) have very limited range, while a 2011 (not 2011B) I tried can see through lead.

I wouldn't be able to see any reason why not. All you can do is try them and if they don't post it back on here. I would think that the drivers provided on the HCL for the 2011 would work just fine.

cmdrkeen, you don't seem to care about my mfcce warning, well, your problem, i don't want to keep nagging you if you do run into fatal application errors when trying to use some hpc2000 apps, remember this though

oh and this has nothing to do with the original hack i sent you

btw, did you use Tascal for importing? try exiting and relaunching TRE and then retry.


edit: hmm maybe i should keep warning you if you intend to send this incomplete hack to others - will break many native hpc apps in its current state.

oflash yes it should work - though you were talking about the 2011B, so i wouldn't use plain 2011 drivers use the hack detailed here.
btw cf wifi cards can be as good as pcmcia, in my experience - and neither would see through the metal wall i have here

I am using the mfcce300.dll file from YOUR, so if that is an issue then it's YOUR fault. Do you not trust your own coding? Also, I have not sent my solution to anyone else, that file still resides on my hard drive. I was using TRE for the registry file and when the file downloads as extension-less, I get suspicious anyway. Giving the file a .reg extension lets TRE associate with it but I get the same syntax error.
For the time being I am going to abandon the cause and use the 2011B CF in the J548 that I will have later this week.

Hrm.. TRE is kind of buggy. Sometimes it will not import a .reg file the first time and then suddenly it will the second time you try.. Who knows why.

The WEP Issue I was refering to was with the driver on the Intel support site. I tried it and its really bad. I'm not sure about the link that was pasted earlier to a claimed 2.11 driver... I did not yet try it. But if its the same as whats on Intel's site...its pretty bad (IE, old)... ;P

The reason I suggested that you use the Pocket PC 2002 driver is that it has a built in Access Point scanner and will also let you scan for APs with PocketWinc. The H/PC drivers do not have this as far as I know... You must type your network's SSID into it manually.

Also, please do not accuse me of malicious intent. I imagine it did not save as a .reg file because your browser did something... Just look at the file in a text editor. You will see its just driver PNPIDs if you do not trust me.

MFCCE300.dll is not made by cmonex, its Microsoft's dll. Cmonex just hosts it other needed libs so they are easily found in one place. She is suggesting that you do not replace the MFCCE300.dll in ROM because its needed for many Handheld PC 2000 programs to work properly. Rather than replace the systemwide MFCCE300.dll in \Windows with the Pocket PC version, its best to either place a copy in the directory of each Pocket PC program that uses it or if you want to be able to run an HPC and Pocket PC MFC app at the same time (especially one from \Windows like the NICTT.exe Symbol/Intel/Socket config app, you will need to use a tool like ExecutabilityCheck (an easy to use GUI hex editor) to modify the MFC Program so it uses a renamed MFC. (Renaming MFCCE300.dll to MFCCE301.dll, for example) Please Google for "ExecutabilityCheck". It will let you easily change the name of the DLL's a Program calls for.

Hope this was helpful.