[LoneCrusader]

Drugwash, on 27 December 2012 - 07:00 AM, said:

Unless I wasn't fully awake this morning or my eyeglasses were too dirty, somewhere on a Intel page (linked somewhere above) it states clearly that there once was a Windows9x version of the 2200BG driver and the last 9x compatible version seems to have been 8.1.0.28 which fixed a certain bug in previous version. I've wasted eight hours today, searching for that version on the web and all I could find was at most an utterly useless installer on Cnet, which I wouldn't use even if my life depended on it. Someone has been very careful in removing all traces of all Windows9x drivers off the face of the web.

The irony is, I just realized I have such mini-PCI Wi-FI card - the very same model - in a drawer, given by a friend of mine after dismantling a broken laptop. If I ever end up with a complete laptop that I could fix for myself (or someone else) and would need a 9x driver for that piece of hardware, they're gonna hear from me badly.

(typos are gonna kill me someday...)

While I don't believe the search should be abandoned, I was able to track down this mysterious 8.1.0.28 version. And it is Windows 2K/XP only. So the Lenovo page is incorrect in claiming 9x compatibility, with that version at least.

Release Notes
Version 8.1.0.28

A package claiming to be a "Beta" version of the 2200 drivers seems to also be 2K/XP only.
Beta Package

[Drugwash]

Maybe that version had been released in separate packages for 9x and 2k/XP and you just tracked down the latter. I couldn't find any details on it on the Lenovo page, therefore this is just an assumption. After all, there's been eight or nine years since the release of the package.

[PROBLEMCHYLD]

Sorry guys, but there is NO DRIVERS for Win98. Its ok if people don't believe that and want to keep searching, but please considerate of others. Having people search for a driver that doesn't exist is.................................. Thank you LoneCrusader for finding an older driver. This shows that no matter how far you go back, there was never a driver for Win98. I stand corrected.

[TmEE]

The 2100 driver someone showed on Lenovo site I could not get working with a 2200. "Driver cannot start..." error. I am on a AMD+ATI platform too (HP NX6125 laptop)
Ralink RA2560 did work nicely ^^

[jds]

TmEE, on 27 December 2012 - 06:50 PM, said:

The 2100 driver someone showed on Lenovo site I could not get working with a 2200. "Driver cannot start..." error. I am on a AMD+ATI platform too (HP NX6125 laptop)
Ralink RA2560 did work nicely ^^

That's unfortunate.

The other option would be to adapt the W2K drivers, however, the older drivers such as '1vwc27ww.exe' require a missing function "NdisInitializeString" (which would need to be added to the WdmStub project for a chance at W98 compatibility), while the newer drivers require several more missing functions.

Looking at some of the file naming conventions for the 2100 and 2200 drivers, we typically see 'w70n9x.*' for W9X 2100, 'w70n5.*' for W2K+ 2100, 'w22n50.*' for W2K 2200 and 'w22n51.*' for WXP 2200. From this pattern, we would expect to see 'w22n9x.*' for W9X 2200 drivers. However, there are no signs that such files exist (or have existed), hence nothing to indicate that W9X drivers ever existed for the 2200.

BTW, the oldest 2200 driver I've found for the 2200 is version 8.0.12.9000 at : ftp.upf.br/arquivos/drivers/Notebook/NEC/NEC%20VERSA%20M340%20FM340/DEVICE/WLANCal2/

The 2100 drivers seem to have version no. 7.*, while the 2200 drivers seem to have version no. 8.*.

Joe.

This post has been edited by jds: 11 January 2013 - 02:51 AM