CardWare with wireless LAN cards

CardWare with wireless LAN cards
CardWare for Windows NT was successfully tested with several wireless LAN cards including Toshiba wireless card Elsa Air Lancer MC-11 3COM 3CRWE737A card All tested cards are compatible with CardWare. 3COM 3CRWE737A card works very well. However few peculiarities were noticed for two other cards. Those peculiarities are related with driver from Lucent Technologies used with both cards. Default resource assignment It was found that Lucent Technologies drivers assign I/O 0x400 and IRQ 10 by default. This default configuration normally doesn't work since I/O 0x400 is rarely available on modern notebooks. Unfortunately Lucent drivers either do not provide any GUI for change default resource assignment or such GUI is well hidden in Advanced tab of installation dialog. In order to make card working you usually will need modify resource assignment manually. For doing this you should: Open DOS box and execute DOSCARD /D. Please notice resources assigned by CardWare to your card. E.g. I/O 0x300 and IRQ 5. Please also notice exact card name as reported by CardWare. E.g. Toshiba wireless card Run REGEDT32 and locate HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\Services\CurrentControlSet\Pcmcia\Database Open card manufacturer subkey (e.g. Toshiba or Elsa). Open card subkey (e.g. Wireless Card or Air Lancer MC-11) Write down value of Driver (e.g. wltos52 or wvlan4) Locate HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\Services\CurrentControlSet\Driver (e.g. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\Services\CurrentControlSet\wvlan4 Open Linkage subkey. Write down value of Bind (e.g. wvlan43) Locate HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\Services\CurrentControlSet\Bind (e.g. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\Services\CurrentControlSet\wvlan43 Open Parameters subkey Modify values of IoBaseAddess and InterruptNumber with values assigned by CardWare (in our example I/O 0x300 and IRQ 5). Click on PCTray icon with left mouse button and Reconfigure your card. Improper startup. The second problem with Lucent driver is improper driver startup. In other words Lucent driver starts regardless the card is inserted or not. If you start system with wireless card inserted and resources are assigned properly - it's not a problem. However if you started your system w/o the card and inserted card later, CardWare sees that Lucent Driver is already started and does nothing. Since Lucent Driver is not PnP driver and do not recognize dynamic insertion the card will be non-functional because driver do not "sees" the card. The work-around is simple: just Click on PCTray icon with left mouse button and Reconfigure your card. The Lucent Driver will be restarted during this operation, will see the card and card will work. You need to do it only once when card is inserted first time after system reboot.

CardWare for Windows NT was successfully tested with several wireless LAN cards including

Toshiba wireless card
Elsa Air Lancer MC-11
3COM 3CRWE737A card

All tested cards are compatible with CardWare. 3COM 3CRWE737A card works very well. However few peculiarities were noticed for two other cards. Those peculiarities are related with driver from Lucent Technologies used with both cards.

Default resource assignment
It was found that Lucent Technologies drivers assign I/O 0x400 and IRQ 10 by default. This default configuration normally doesn't work since I/O 0x400 is rarely available on modern notebooks. Unfortunately Lucent drivers either do not provide any GUI for change default resource assignment or such GUI is well hidden in Advanced tab of installation dialog. In order to make card working you usually will need modify resource assignment manually. For doing this you should:
- Open DOS box and execute DOSCARD /D. Please notice resources assigned by CardWare to your card. E.g. I/O 0x300 and IRQ 5. Please also notice exact card name as reported by CardWare. E.g. Toshiba wireless card
- Run REGEDT32 and locate HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\Services\CurrentControlSet\Pcmcia\Database
- Open card manufacturer subkey (e.g. Toshiba or Elsa).
- Open card subkey (e.g. Wireless Card or Air Lancer MC-11)
- Write down value of Driver (e.g. wltos52 or wvlan4)
- Locate HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\Services\CurrentControlSet\Driver (e.g. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\Services\CurrentControlSet\wvlan4
- Open Linkage subkey.
- Write down value of Bind (e.g. wvlan43)
- Locate HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\Services\CurrentControlSet\Bind (e.g. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\Services\CurrentControlSet\wvlan43
- Open Parameters subkey
- Modify values of IoBaseAddess and InterruptNumber with values assigned by CardWare (in our example I/O 0x300 and IRQ 5).
- Click on PCTray icon with left mouse button and Reconfigure your card.
Improper startup.
The second problem with Lucent driver is improper driver startup. In other words Lucent driver starts regardless the card is inserted or not. If you start system with wireless card inserted and resources are assigned properly - it's not a problem. However if you started your system w/o the card and inserted card later, CardWare sees that Lucent Driver is already started and does nothing. Since Lucent Driver is not PnP driver and do not recognize dynamic insertion the card will be non-functional because driver do not "sees" the card.

The work-around is simple: just Click on PCTray icon with left mouse button and Reconfigure your card. The Lucent Driver will be restarted during this operation, will see the card and card will work. You need to do it only once when card is inserted first time after system reboot.