Registered: Nov 1999
Location: washington, dc
Posts: 82

I am a happy Visor user, but have not got into modems and email or internet from my Visor, since 95% of my email is from the corporate LotusNotes, which is reached via VPN and a firewall. So I have to lug around a laptop on trips, just to be able to check emails. If there was a way to get through the firewall via a wired or wireless modem, I could ditch the laptop.

So, it turns out there is a "pilot test" (sorry for the pun) called "PDA Connect", wherein you can get to the Lotus Notes servers via:

1. Dialup Modems for the Palm/Visor or PocketPC
2. Wireless Modems or internet-ready cell phones for Palm/Visor or PocketPC
3. Wired Ethernet (all of our locations have wired ethernet connectoins in every room).

But alas, Visor does not have any Wired Ethernet Springboards (I read about the demise of the Xircom wired ethernet springboard) And it appears from the VC boards that no-one else seems to be building a wired ethernet springboard.

I found out about a wired ethernet CF card for PocketPCs--


Here's the question for the VisorCentral crowd : would it work to use one of these CF wired ethernet cards with the new CF Springboard Adaptors that are now on the market?

http://www.pretec.com/index2/produc.../CompactLAN.htm

(below is review from a tech guy on one of our internal bulletin boards, on this wired ethernet card for his iPaq.

Thanks in advance.

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Overall Rating [ 1.2.3.4.5.6.7.8.9. ] on the cool gadget scale!

Price - $109 via Amazon.com

Performance - What can I say, its fast, really fast. Using my cable modem internet service at home it scored a whopping 800+kbps in a bandwidth test, that's 26 times faster than the best connection I tested with my Pretec 56k dial-up modem. Here is another comparison, on a good day in the office with my Notebook PC I might get 400-500kbps in a bandwidth test.

The above are WAN (wide area network) tests and so the speed is slower than the cards rated 10,000kbps. This is because you might be communicating with sites thousands of miles away and traveling through a lot of infrastructure to get there and you are sharing this pipe with a lot of other users. For LAN (local area network) connections though performance is much faster. Try connecting your Pocket PC directly to your notebook PC via this ethenet card instead of your serial or USB cradle, now you are in the millions of bits per second.

Opinion - I purchased the Pretec ethernet network card on features, price, and market history. At $109 its one of the least expensive and Pretec has been manufacturing these cards for quite a long while. Compatible with HP Jornada 540 series, Casio Cassiopeia E-115/125, and iPAQ 3600 series.

Pro's

The Pretec has a standard ethernet cable jack molded into the unit. Other modems require a short dongle cable adapter similar to dongles we used for years with our Firm notebook modems and network cards. These dongles break often and I wanted to avoid both broken dongles and carrying yet another piece of equipment.

For a network card I was impressed with the plug and play quality (for Pocket PC) and its hot-swapable. That means so you can yank the ethernet card out, stuff in your GPS or storage card to do something else, then put the ethernet card back in and jump back on the network without a reboot.

Installation was easy for the Pocket PC, plug the card in, click OK to the default setup settings, then reboot....or....since the card is hot-swapable simply pull the card out and plug it back in. That's pretty darn simple for a network card install folks.

Note: If your cable modem internet service does not automatically assign you a IP address (most do) then you have an added setup step of entering in your assigned IP/DNS addresses manually. Not a big deal but thought I would mention it. In technical lingo, if they have DHCP enabled then you get your IP address automatically.

Unlike the Pretec 56k modem, the Pretec ethernet network card has status lights for link and activity. If the link light is on, you know you have a good cable connection. If the activity light is flashing or solid, you know data is being transferred. This helps with troubleshooting, besides they look cool.

I almost forgot...the card comes with a PCMCIA card adapter! This means you can use it with your Notebook PC (a nice backup option if your Firm network card fails in the field) or if you have an iPAQ with a PCMCIA card sleeve instead of the CF card sleeve, you can still use this card. I'm guessing you could also use the adapter with the Pretec 56k modem (the PCMCIA adapter is not included with the modem, you have to purchase it separately) but you should check with Pretec just to be sure.

Con's

Documentation was VERY poor for the Pocket PC and I can say that with confidence because there wasn't any. Pretec seems to be using up old pre-pockedt PC packing materials including boxes and user guides, or maybe I just got a box that's been on the shelf a while but there really is no excuse for not including a Pocket PC installation guide for a device which their web site advertises as, "designed for Windows Powered Pocket PC". I wasted time reading both the quick start guide and fairly lengthy user guide before concluding the Pocket PC was not covered. I have the technical background to figure out installations on my own but this would be confusing to many customers. If it were not for this I would have rated the product a 10. Click Here for Pocket PC install instructions.

It protrudes above my iPAQ about 1.5 inches, like the modem I'd like to see them shorten this by half.

The warranty is poor. Most manufacturers offer a 5 year warranty and Xircom offers a lifetime warranty. Of course they cost nearly a third more so you are in essence paying for an extended warranty.

Registered: Dec 1999
Location: Connecticut USA
Posts: 2682

The following is from the FlashAdapter FAQ:

quote:

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Q. Why won't the FlashAdapter module work with a CF modem (or any other non-storage CF card)?

A. The adapter is only designed to support CF storage cards. CF modems require additional interface signals (such as IORD, IOWR) that this adapter does not provide. Supporting those signals would require adding logic chips to the design and making significantly more PCB modifications. It is Kopsis' position that this type of functionality can be better performed by dedicated Springboard modules, so that capability was sacrificed in the interest of making this module inexpensive and easy to build.

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