Non-HP Intel PRO/Wireless 2200 with latest BIOS!

[kf_man]

This was a little hard for me to get a hold of.  I was only able to find it copied from the old forum to an HP forum.  Anyway, the text is as follows:

Thanks to Mark Wrightson,

Here is the answer:

1. I reverted to an older bios on the zt3017ea v.F34, any newer version blocks this card instead of removing and reinserting it which did not work for me.
2. I used Koppix v 3.9
3. I skiped the ipw2200.tar.gz part

I have a solution thanks to whiteheat and druid cz from x1000 forums that allows you to use any Intel Pro Wireless 2200BG card inside your HP laptop.

Before, I received the error 104: unsupported wireless card, now my NC8000 laptop will boot perfectly. Now you can buy your card for < £25.00 instead of HP's £60 + vat + p&p.

First off if you don't have linux installed you will need to go to www.knoppix.org and download KNOPPIX_V3.8.2-2005-05-05-EN.iso, then burn the cd

You need to have the card install during the boot sequence so, have your laptop open and bootup, when you see the boot:_ line insert the card then press enter. Knoppix will autodetect the card & the bios wont complain.

Once knoppix has booted:

Click on the penguin on the taskbar and select "Root Shell", then the following command (from now on any line that begins with a # is a command to be typed at the Root prompt:
#iwconfig
You will get a list of ethernet adapters, eth0, eth1 etc. The wireless one should be quite obvious from the text displayed after it with all the wireless parameters!
#ethtool -e ethX
Obviously replace the 'X' with the index of your wireless card you found above.
You will get a hex dump of the 256 bytes of EEPROM data.
Note: There is nothing dangerous in the above steps at all.

If you want to writing to your EEPROM (You can seriously screw your card up so be careful ):

#mkdir /usr/tmp
#cd /usr/tmp
#wget http://www.geocities.com/sonyirclib/ipw2200.tar.gz

N.B. This file has already been patched to allow writing to the eeprom

#tar xvzf ipw2200.tar.gz
#cd ipw2200-1.0.3
#sh unload
#sh load

Now all that you need to do is write to the eeprom. If your card is from Europe:

#ethtool -E eth0 magic 0x2200 offset 0x8 value 0xf6
#ethtool -E eth0 magic 0x2200 offset 0x9 value 0x12
#ethtool -E eth0 magic 0x2200 offset 0xa value 0x3c
#ethtool -E eth0 magic 0x2200 offset 0xb value 0x10

If it is from the US:

ethtool -E eth0 magic 0x2200 offset 0x8 value 0xf5
ethtool -E eth0 magic 0x2200 offset 0x9 value 0x12
ethtool -E eth0 magic 0x2200 offset 0xa value 0x3c
ethtool -E eth0 magic 0x2200 offset 0xb value 0x10

N.B. the -E must be uppercase for writing to work.

Now reboot your computer and you should no longer get the error 104...!

For more details see: http://www.x1000forums.com/index.php?showtopic=8737

The original thread can be found here.

Please note that I can not be held responsible for any damage done to your hardware.  If I ever have to use this tip myself, I will try to clean it up a bit and make it more clear.  For now, you will have to take this at face value.

[romeon]

Hint: don't try Knoppix 5.01. The 2200BG is not supported (!)

[romeon]

Knoppix 4.0 doesn't work either. Errors while "sh load" ...

Of course Knoppix 3.8.2 / 3.9 is nowhere to download anymore.

[deluxe]

I just tweaked my HP 2200BG card the other day to open up channels 12 and 13.  I'm in Korea after all, and those are legit channels here.

These patched drivers work with Knoppix v4.0.2: http://www.geocities.com/sonyirclib/ipw2200.tar.gz

[romeon]

Last weekend I tweaked my 2200BG too. With knoppix 3.9 (from edonkey) it worked immediately.

[NeoMatrixJR]

anyone know if this works with the intel 2915ABG card?

[kf_man]

Since this card was never offered for the notebook by HP, I highly doubt that it works.  The strings that are changed to make this work identify the card to the system and the drivers.  Changing these to incorrect values would most likely make Windows detect the card incorrectly and probably cause it not to work.

[ciper]

I did this modification on a 2915ABG. The steps are ever so slightly different but I am currently posting this message from my newly modified "intel retail box" network card

Does anyone still need help modifying their card?

[excogitation]

What do you need the latest firmware for anyways?
Didn't seem to improve anything.

And now that I have an Abocom wireless card (125mbit - which actually improves as much as the latest firmware ...

[NeoMatrixJR]

Yeah, I'd still like to see instructions on the 2915ABG.  I haven't upgraded yet, because I figure if I can't upgrade to the nicer card, I wasn't going to just yet...

[kf_man]

The problem with the 2915 is that there was never one for the zt3000.  The reason the 2200 works is because people modified the PCI string that identifies the card to match the string from the HP version of the card.  If you are intent on upgrading the card, I recommend sticking with a lower card.  Personally I've never used the A-band functionality on my 3945 card.

[NeoMatrixJR]

Looks like ciper got one working.

@Ciper: was this on an x1000?

[audioman]

I was able to do this as well. I'm now using Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG.. I was able to bypass the whitelist by flashing modified bios and by disabling the CRC check from the windows hp flash utiliy. :p

[toy4two]

I was able to do this as well. I'm now using Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG.. I was able to bypass the whitelist by flashing modified bios and by disabling the CRC check from the windows hp flash utiliy. :p

can you post how to do that or post up the modified bios