i'm beginning to think i'm out of luck, but i've found some good writups on related issues searching on here, so i'm throwing this out there.

i've got a 3Com 3CRWB609B Bluetooth PCcard that i'm trying to use with Nokia's PC Suite, to connect to my N70.

Phase 1:
i installed the 3Com card per their instructions, with their driver disk. using 3Com's bluetooth connection manager, i was able to successfully pair my phone and laptop. looked good!

installed Nokia's PC suite successfully, but none of the connection methods (Serial, Bluetooth, i even tried USB) would find my phone. my phone is 100% supported by Nokia's software.


3com's installer builds 6 things in Device Manager:
under a new category "3Com Bluetooth", the PC Card
under the "Modems" category, 3Com "DUN", "FAX" and "LAN" clients
under the "Ports" category :
3Com Serial Client on Com 7
3Com Serial Host on Com 8


so, that's pretty neat - 3Com's bluetooth software emulates COM ports so i can just point whatever comm software i want at COM7/8 and be communicating with the phone via Bluetooth.


Unfortunately, Nokia's PC Suite doesn't expect so much from the BT drivers. it's geared towards the Microsoft Bluetooth drivers, and any COM ports i set 3Com to use, Nokia politely stays away from. i fussed around with some port numbers, and tried to get Nokia to use one of the special 3Com COM ports under the "Serial" connection method, but Nokia expects to have to emulate its own serial port so it won't share port numbers with 3Com.


Phase 2:
found this writeup here on MS's SP2 Bluetooth support:
http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?ForumId=8&TopicId=2200

so i ran thru that a bit. uninstalled all my 3Com software.

i downloaded the Widcomm drivers and installed them per the instructions in that thread. Widcomm installed OK just as was posted.

Microsoft's SP2 bluetooth drivers don't support my BT card. it's not on their supported list, and without the 3Com CD no drivers are found.

so i never get the "generic bluetooth device" in the Device Manager, and therefore couldn't get this to work for me.

i also tried updating drivers for my 3Com card directly with Widcomm drivers, but that resulted in a rather ugly DOS-flash and instant OS crash.

now i have 3Com drivers and Widcomm taskbar and mgmt Apps. so everything in the device manager has a driver, but the Bluetooth setup apps all insist 'No Bluetooth devices found'.

so 3Com, in their clever serial-port-emulation-ness, have effectively disguised by BT hardware as just another serial port, preventing Widcomm or MS SP2 drivers from noticing or managing it.

Phase 3:

is there some way to:

1) trick Nokia PC Suite into using a COM port that 3Com has created, without trying to emulate that port itself? right now, Nokia Suite expects a Nokia cable to be attached to the serial port, so since it's not it won't proceed to use that port. also, it is prevented from using an already-active COM port, and 3Com reserves the ports it's using as active. i

2) trick MS SP2 bluetooth into thinking my 3Com PCCard is a bluetooth dongle it recognizes, since Nokia can talk BT thru the MS drivers (i assume) if the MS drivers could talk to my card, the chain would be complete, as the card talk can to my phone.

3) something else?

or, perhaps, option (4): sell my 3Com card on ebay and find a (relatively cheap) BT PCcard that is MS SP2-compatible. i don't want a USB dongle, i want a mostly-permanent install that i can setup and forget about. is there one??

thanks for any advice...