ok Wifi finally works

I'm writing this connected to my hotspot.
for some strange reason the driver didn't work in UNSUPPORTED mode. It wasn't recognized by XWLAN and it probably wouldn't have worked without it anyway (scan.exe didn't display anything!?). I suspect that the reason is that there's an initialization flag that's only enabled if the device is officially supported. At least that happened after patching genm32w.os2 to think our RT2860 is officially supported. According to the Genmac debug logs that didn't seem to change much (expect for the new flag I couldn't enable in UNSUPPORTED mode) but suddenly XWLAN recognized the driver.
Looking for public hotspots doesn't work - don't ask me why. However you can create a profile if you know the SSID and connect to that manually configured WLAN. Once connected it seems to work fine - it's stable so far.
btw. I didn't need the Wifi device firmware - so the impression I had after browsing (and trying to patch) the Windows driver was right: Providing the firmware is optional.
I attached a ZIP file to this post containing the Windows driver (used the one from my driver CD), the NIF file needed by Genmac as well as a genm32w.os2 patch ("patch genmac.patch /A").
The necessary steps are:
Install Genmac 2.2 without any drivers, copy the WRAPPER_1814_0781 directory to \ecs\system\genmac\driver, copy W1814x0781.NIF to \ecs\system\genmac\nif and \ibmcom\macs and copy genmac.patch to \ecs\system\genmac\driver, make a backup of genm32w.os2 and apply the patch with "patch genmac.patch /A" on the commandline. Finally copy the patched genm32w.os2 to \ibmcom\macs. You should be able to add a driver called "GenMac Wrapper Ralink RT2860 series Wireless LAN Card" using MPTS configuration or by editing your PROTOCOL.INI. On startup it will say it loads the driver for Asus WLAN RT2400 but display the proper device id. (You could hexedit that, too... easily... just be sure that the new nullterminated string is shorter or as long as the old one so you don't overwrite some other static variables or code)
Alright, I'd say it's time to remove the "Designed for Windows XP" sticker ;-)
cheers,
Robin