Driver for a 3Com 3CRWE62092A X-Jack
PCMCIA wireless card for Linux 2.6.x kernel


Hardware

The driver has been designed for 11 Mbps Wireless LAN PC Card (1148) and 3Com 3CRWE62092A Wireless LAN PC Card, but should work with all poldhu based cards with minor modifications.

The driver now supports changing SSID, Airlock(TM), WEP encryption and Ad-Hoc (IBSS) mode. This is configured using the wireless-tools. As of version 0.2.13, it also supports Active Probing on the 3Com cards, which is needed to authenticate to certain base stations.

Download

Check the project's download section at sourceforge.net/projects/poldhu.

History

The original version 0.2.x of the poldhu pcmcia driver was written for kernels 2.4.x by No Wires Needed (check http://www.xs4all.nl/~bvermeul/swallow/).
It was then re-written to support early 2.6.x kernels and released as version 0.3.1 on Mon Dec 21 12:00:00 CET 2003 by swallow@blackstar.nl.

Since I happen to have access to this pcmcia card, I tried to use it on kernel 2.6.9. Of course, the 0.3.1 driver would not build. My e-mails to the original developer remained unanswered...

So one day I have decided to do the port myself - taking as an example some other wireless driver and cut-and-pasted the driver's logic.
Unfortunately I do not have any information about the chipset, logic diagrams e.t.c.
So if you have more info about this hardware, or notice a problem - please let me know...

Still, it is a cool card, and the driver works for me...

PS. I do not know what exactly happens with the hardware when the antenna is pressed in.
Somehow parts of the hardware are disabled or powered down. As a result the card init fails.
Basically never use this option as the results are unpredictable (will the card jam or come up?)

PPS. There is a similar 3Com 3CRSHPW196 X-Jack (greenish label) card which is using ATMEL chipset.
This poldhu driver does not support the ATMEL card.

PPPS. The 3Com WinXX driver can be found at 3Com site.

Thanks,

Woody Suwalski
woodys@xandros.com