Tired of being restricted by your Nintendo WiFi adaptor? Fed up of trying to connect with homebrew applications and games like beup and Explosive Gas? Then look no further! There are infact some modified Buffalo drivers that work perfectly with the Nintendo dongle allowing it to be used as a standard access point.
Credit to this goes entirely to waffle from the GBA Dev forum for posting this here:
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If you want to use the official Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector as a standard SoftAP or put it into Infrastructure or Ad-Hoc modes, then you can download the drivers from here: http://users.on.net/~kabeyas/nin_wifi.rar Before you continue, make sure you have removed the Nintendo software and drivers as they will no longer be needed.
Inside the Drivers folder of my RAR file, you will find modified Buffalo drivers. Install these drivers for the USB Connector. Then download the ASUS software from here: ftp://dlsvr02.asus.com/pub/ASUS/wireless/WL-167g/eng_2371.zip and install that. When it prompts you to restart, select No. I have found that there is no need to.
Now from the RAR file I made, extract the six EXE files in the into the ASUS folder (default: C:/Program Files/ASUSWLAN Card Utilities). Make sure you overwrite the existing files. Then click Start -> All Programs -> ASUS Utility -> WLAN Card -> ASUS WLAN Control Center. You will get a dialog asking if you want to use the Windows configuration utility or the ASUS one, select the option that uses ASUS one and disables the Windows one. Then there will be a wizard. Click Cancel to close the wizard.
Now copy the file "C:/Program Files/ASUSWLAN Card Utilities/Driver/WinXP/AP/rt2500usb.sys" to "C:/WINDOWS/system32/drivers". Make sure you overwrite the existing file. Right-click on the ASUS software icon in the System Tray (bottom-right corner of screen) and select Wireless Settings. When the settings dialog opens, on the left select Config, then go to the SoftAP tab, and select Soft AP Mode. Then un-tick the Enable ICS checkbox. Then on the left click Apply. You will get a message box asking if you really want to change to SoftAP mode, click Yes. A message will come up saying something like "add the adapter to the network bridge", just ignore it and click OK. If all has gone well, there will be no error messages. Now close the ASUS Wireless Config utility or it will start conflicting when we manually set ICS.
Now go to Control Panel -> Network Connections (this may have opened automatically opened up when you Applied the SoftAP settings). Right-click on the Network Adapter you are currently accessing your Internet through and open the properties for that connection. Go to the Advanced tab, and click "Allow other network users to connect through this computer's Internet connection". Then click OK. If you get an error message saying the IP address is already in use, disable the Network adapter you are trying to share then try again - be sure to enable it again afterwards. It can take a long time for ICS to be enabled so wait patiently.
Now right-click on the Wireless Network Connection and click Properties. In the middle of the dialog there will be some protocols, select Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) and then open the properties for that. Windows would have assigned a static IP address if ICS was successfully enabled, check to make sure this IP address does not conflict with other IP addresses on your network. Also, it should be on a different subnet to the Local Area Connection (for example, my computer's IP address is 192.168.0.2, I assigned the wireless network connection the IP address of 192.168.1.1 - which is on a different subnet). If it is on the same subnet, ICS will not work correctly.
With that done, open the ASUS Wireless Config utility again. On the left select Config, in the Basic tab set a SSID. In the encryption tab, select Shared for Network Authentication and WEP for Data Encryption - I have found that this works with the DS. Now enter a WEP key. Go back to the Basic tab, and at the bottom click on Advanced, change the 54g Mode setting to 802.11b only. Click Apply on the left to save the settings.
Now turn on your DS, play a Wi-Fi Connection game, go to the Nintendo WFC Settings, and select Manual Setup. Enter the SSID and WEP Key (both of these are case-sensitive) you entered to the ASUS Config utility before. Select No to Auto-obtain IP Address (you must do this because the Nintendo DS doesn't seem to DHCP correctly with ICS for some reason). Now give your DS an IP Address (this must be on the same subnet as the USB connector, I gave my DS the IP address: 192.168.1.2). For subnet mask enter 255.255.255.0. For gateway and primary DNS, enter the IP address of the USB connector. Now try and test connection, and if all has gone well the connection should be successful!
Now with the ASUS Wireless Config utility, you may want to hide your SSID, and use MAC Address filtering to improve the security of your wireless access point.
If you have a different USB adapter that uses the RT2500 chipset (there is a list here: http://ralink.rapla.net/), install the normal drivers for your USB adapter. Then get the PID and VID numbers from Device Manager - right-click on the device and click properties, then go to the Details tab. The device ID would look something like this: USBVID_0411&PID_008B. Now follow the steps above until you get to the point after where you have copied my six modified EXE files. Open them in a HEX editor and do a search for "USBVID_0411&PID_008B" (without quotes) and replace all search occurrences you find with the VID and PID of your own USB adapter.
I have mirrored the correct files here on DS-Scene incase any of the links decide to die:
Buffalo are the only drivers available as far as I am aware. It has been a while since this was discovered though so there could be something out there but I haven´t seen it. Sorry I can´t be more help.
Just want to mention there is a big 28 page thread on the afterdawn forum about this. I have been following it for a couple of months but with no success for my wifi dongle
I mention this because you might be able to get some help, but, you also might be out of luck. It seems that a lot of people get to a point where there is some kind of error that prevents them from proceeding.......some of the experts help out, but often they have nothing.......so, using your Wifi as an AP might be a crap-shot....if it works it will, otherwise it seems you will have to put up with it unless you know a lot yourself about these kinds of things.
Even if you follow every instruction exactly you might have to give up......unfortunately
Dont mean to be a downer but it seems the promise of this SoftAP is not a given :´(
*edited on 2007/07/15 02:22:16 by Soma36
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