Jornada 720 - Establishing WiFi

Several years ago I inherited a Jornada 720, but set it aside and did not use it. I recently discovered this gem and want to install wifi cabability. Sadly, I am lower than a newbie when it comes to such matters. I have read as much as I can on the wifi tutorials but have found that after awhile the vocabularly soon overwhlems me. I have searched the forum and found a few articles, but nothing that can get me started down the right path.

Is there someone who has the patience to guide me to the right resources so I can instal wifi on this absolutely wonderful machine?

When I opened the box into which I had stored the 720, here is what I found....

* The Jornada 720
* Intel PRO/wireless 2011 LAN PC Card (2.4GHz 11Mps) IEEE802,11b
[A white sticker that says MHE Helpdesk NIC #269]
* A SanDisk Compact Flash Adapter card with a 1.0GB CF card inserted into it.
* EZ PC Card 10 Ethernet Network Card SMC

None of the above cards were actually inserted into the 720

[1] Are the above cards sufficinet to establish wifi?
[2] How do I check to be sure that the cards have the right drivers installed?
[3] I have not yet established connectivity with my desktop. Do I need to do this first?
[4] Here at home, I have a Verison Adaptec Rounter which I use to to connect wirelessly with my laptop. This wireless router works and is functional.

Am I asking the right questions? And if so... can someone help me out by pointing me in the right direction?

Many thanks in advance...

braveheart

Download the driver right here and install it using your CF card.
http://www.hpcfactor.com/downloads/details.asp?r=67116CDB-2B9B-4752-B0ED-8A5B68495707&highlight=2011_win_ce.exe

By the way, this thread is in the wrong category. It should be in HPC2000, not Handheld PC Professional.

** The preview screen showed this reply to be center aligned...yes, I know, it looks and reads very tacky **

Thank you. The mis-classification is a sign of my meager knowledge of the technology of these devices.

The above helpful link took me to an HPCFactor page that has two downloads the driver for the 2011 Wireless card

[1] 2001_win_ce.exe
[2] inflated.zip

My host computer is a laptop running Vista Home Premium. I understand that with this operating system old style "Activesync Connectivty" is no longer possible. However, when I connect my 720 to the host using a USB connection, I am able to transfer files (albeit, at a very slow rate) from my host to either the 1gig CF card or directly to the 720 memory. This transfer is done "manually" using Vista Window Explorer to drag and drop the files.

However, other aspects of this process of loading a driver for the 2011 Wireless Card are not self evident to me. So... here goes...

[1] I am able to open and extract the Arm CAB file from the Inflated.zip file.
[2] Where do I place the Arm CAB file and the .exe file in my 720? Can I place them both on the 1gig CF card or must I place them in the 720 built in memory?
[3] Why do I need two files?
[4] When the files are in place, which file do I "execute"? The .exe file or the CAB file?
[5] Do I need to perform a soft reset after I install the driver?
[6] Will the driver set-up tell me that I have achieved a successful installation?

*** The Plot Thickens ***

I inadvertently inserted the 2011 Wireless card into the 720 prior to the installation of the card drivers. I now understand that this was a big "No-No". [I have discussed this moral lapse with my Confessor.]

I now must perform a hard reset on the 720 in which ALL data will be lost. CORRECT?

Question...

Can I transfer the data and user installed application files from the 720 to the CF card prior to the hard reset?

And, then, can I REMOVE the CF card from the unit and then reinsert the cf card AFTER the hard reset?

I would then move the data files and the user installed application back to the 720.

Thanks to all who comment...

braveheart

You don't need both. The .exe is the host installer, the zip file is provided by me for users who don't have host PC sync support so that they can install without activesync. Both ultimately provide the same driver.

Copy the cab up and run it from anywhere on the device/cf. Then soft reset. It should be obvious when it finishes.

You shouldn't have to hard reset it.

If you mess up the registry you shouldn't backup applications, but you can copy your data to the cf. hp backup will backup everything.

You can remove the cf at any time, but I recommend turning it off first.

Upon further work, I now see that the inflated.zip file contains an HPCPro_arm file AND a PctPC_ARM.

I assume that I install the HPCPro_arm. Is this correct? (Becoming more technically savvy each day...)

All that I have read indicates that, if I insert the Intel Pro/Wireless 2011 LAN PC Card into the 720 prior to installing the driver, I would need to perform a hard reset. However, your guidance above says that I SHOULD NOT need to do so. If I do not perform the hard reset prior to installing the driver, how will I know that the hard reset SHOULD HAVE BEEN PERFORMED??

My on-going thanks

braveheart

Correct.

When you insert the device before the driver is installed it will prompt for a driver name, afterwards it may not do this, equally it may. So worst case you just enter the driver name. If that fails then the registry got kaput, but that only happens on wrong driver installs and multi-version installs usually.

BINGO...!!
With a few trial and error steps, the Intel Pro/Wireless 2011 card is now operating. However, I am plagued by a low signal strength. My office is upstairs and the router is in the basement. However, I have a signal booster or repeater (whatever the name nowadays...) that I intend to hook up.

One nagging problem... when I access web sites that begin with www... everything works. When I access web sites that do not have www, such as, mobile.nytimes.com, or mobile.reuters.com, or iona.swiftmob.com, the 720 device thinks that I am attempting to download a file, which I am not.

Any suggestions on how to adjust the browser to avoid it thinking I want to do a file download?

Many thanks...!!

braveheart

mobile.nytimes.com is probably executing a 301 redirect in a way that the 720 doesn't support. There's a good chance that the content needs to be XML or WAP basesm so I would recommend sticking to the full size site if that happens.

Let me jump in re the mobile site browsing. You're going to need a go-between site such as skweezer.com. Go to skweezer on your J-720, then type in mobile.nytimes.com and skweezer should take you there without Pocket IE complaining along the way.

Once you figure that out, you might bounce around the web (on your desktop) and search out other sites similar to skweezer, and they may well be better.

Jake

TO JAKE, C, AND OTHERS ON THIS THREAD...

I can't believe this...!! Where do you guys get this stuff...?? I mean all of it...??

Jake you are right... skweezer picks up the tab for a few drinks... and everyone seems to be happy...

To help me look around the web... what do you call sites like skweezer?? I would not have the faintest idea... I tried searching under "Happy Hour Sites" but none of them seemed to be on point...

Drinks on me tonight guys...

braveheart

LOL

It's called an HTML/Web Transcoder.

Yes, this is a great, great forum--would all of life be as solvable as the problems brought here. Actually, it was CE Geek, years ago, who pointed out to me the virtues of skweezer. I would google "skweezer" and maybe "mlvb" together and hope that some kind soul has put together a list of mobile browsing assistance. This is the site I use for my Sharp Mobilon 4100, a CE 2.0 device, and my only handheld for the next year: http://mlvb.net

I find mlvb renders mobile sites far better for ce 2.0 than skweezer. A small trick is to bookmark the rendered page; that way, you could go to m.cnn.com, without first having to go to skweezer et al. Go here, if you want, for other mobile sites: http://www.hpcfactor.com/forums/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=14823&posts=3&highlight=3mx&highlightmode=1#M137743 And if you have any that I don't, I'd love to hear about them. Best, Jake