Nokia D211 GPRS/WLAN PCMCIA Card

As promised, here is my review of this PCMCIA card which promises
Handheld PC users the ability to access the internet from home via
Wi-Fi, or while out and about via GPRS (SIM required of course).

If, like me, you get one from ebay without the original CD, you can
find the drivers in the software repository at the top right of this
blog. I found them at www.hpcfactor.com which seems to be one of the
few sites for the HPC that still seems to be going.

Installation is simple, just install the drivers, reset and plug in
the card.

GPRS set-up was simple enough and allowed a strong connection in my
experience. As a bonus, the drivers included SMS messaging, which was
nice and might be useful for some.

However, I had quite forgotten how terribly slow GPRS is. Now my
memory has been jogged, I seem to remember being quite dissatisfied
with the speeds back when that was the best we had.

Even worse though was the W-Fi, which despite hours of searching the
web and fiddling with the configuration I could not get a successful
connection. I had partial success with an old D-Link wireless router
that I dug out the back of the cupboard, which appeared to connect but
wouldn't transfer any data.

In the end, I just had to admit defeat. Discussion on hpcfactor's
forums seem to back up this experience. This was a real shame as I
wanted an all-in-one solution, but to have the connectivity I want I
would have to use the Nokia and my existing Wi-Fi card, which in the
end was just too much hassle when I can just use the Wi-Fi card plus
the wireless hotspot on my phone.

If anyone reads this and wants to try for themselves, I'll gladly let
them have it for just the postage.

So to sum up, if you just want GPRS on your HPC, then this is the
hardware for you. If you want both mobile access and Wi-Fi in one card
then you are probably out of luck.

Sent from my HP Jornada 720

Connecting to the Internet

The great thing about the Jornada is it's built-in 56K modem. It gave
me such a kick to connect it to the phone line and try dial-up again
after all these years and hear all those noises emanating from the
machine. I must have been really handy at the time to just plug in a
cable and connect for your email or web.

Fast forward to 2013 and to be honest, it's not so handy any more.
It's more of a bind than anything else. I did toy with the idea of
carrying a modem cable around with me, but I knew there had to be a
better way.

So back to ebay and I found a cheap PCMCIA wi-fi card called the
"Cabletron Systems Roamabout Wi-Fi". Setting it up wasn't so easy
though. There seem to be quite a few of these listed on ebay at the
moment in the UK and appear on searches for "Jornada", so there may be
a few people stuggling like I did.

Firstly, I couldn't find the correct drivers, and spent a lot of time
installing and uninstalling drivers to no avail. The drivers supplied
with the card were of no use. The correct drivers, which I eventually
tracked down are in the repository on the right if anyone needs them.

Windows CE 3.0 cannot support the WPA encryption that my wireless
router uses, and I didn't want to drop the security to WEP, so once
again I had to be a bit more creative.

On the router I set up a guest network called "Jornada". In the router
settings I made sure that it was set to not broadcast the SSID,
meaning other computers would not be able to see this guest network.
You would only be able to connect if you knew the name of the network.
On the back of the Roamabout card is something called a MAC address.
This is a unique identifier for the modem card, so if you set up a MAC
adddress filter on the guest network for this address, it will only
let this particular card connect. I left the guest network unsecured.

That done, I added a profile in the Roamabout settings. When it asked
for SSID I had to type this in because it is a hidden network. I made
sure the security settings were left open and finished the setup.

Lo and behold, it worked!

To be sure it's not going to be the fastest connection to the
internet, but you don't need it on a device of this age.

Out and about, I suspect there would be problems connecting to public
wi-fi hotspots because of the security, but at home this works fine
and dandy.

In any case, I have just ordered a Nokia D211 Wi-Fi/GPRS card from
Amazon second hand, which should solve the mobility issue once set up
with a pay-as-you-go SIM card, so I'll let you know how that goes.

Sent from my HP Jornada 720