October 22, 2009 at 12:11 am · Filed under Windows, Wireless
I recently needed the MAC address for another AP in my house, and after downloading and installing NetStumbler, was dismayed to find that for some reason the Atheros 11n chipset in my MBP isn’t supported.
A quick scout around and I found this command, which makes use of the excellent netsh command within Windows (XP onwards only I think, and the syntax/parameters seem to change every release – this was tested in Windows 7 and is known working in Vista…):
netsh wlan show networks mode=bssid
Et voila! You should have a nicely detailed list of all the APs in your vicinity. Nice to not have to use a third party app for something simple within Windows! 
September 30, 2009 at 8:10 pm · Filed under Hardware
After finally getting my hands on the now famous Linksys WRT54GL router, and flashing it with DD-WRT, I was left with a small problem: I had ADSL, not Cable, and I didn’t have an ADSL modem to hand, not even under my bed. No problem I thought, I’d just use my Netgear DG834G flashed with the DGTeam firmware and use that in bridge/modem mode, and so I did. At this point clouds started forming over head and my worst fears were confirmed, the Gods truly where conspiring against me, for the DG834G was only sync’ing at 18Mbps/812Kbps. [/drama]
Using the O2 Wireless Box II (if I ever have to mention the model number of a router again it will be too soon) I had previously achieved 22Mbps/1.2Mbps – and for any self-respecting geek that 4Mbps matters; a shortfall of that magnitude could do serious damage to my reputation on the touring circuit. After some quick research it was confirmed: the supposed ‘ADSL2+’ compatible chipset in the Netgear isn’t up to the task.
So I had only one option left – hack the O2 box. After half an hour or so of digging, I finally found an article that detailed the process (without the use of an .ini file, which I was hoping to avoid), and documented it well. I’ll run through the steps here in case that forum or that particular post ever goes ‘bye-bye’.
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August 24, 2009 at 8:46 am · Filed under Hardware, Linux
This post gives brief details on reviving an extremely old Sony Vaio PCG-505TX and loading the Debian net installer via floppy disk
I was recently given an old Sony PCG-505TX, with a monster spec of Pentium 300 MMX and 64MB of RAM. Whilst most phones come with a more powerful processor and more RAM nowadays, you can’t* install Debian on a phone, and the keyboard on the laptop still makes it a winner.
However, with only a floppy disk drive at my disposal, I had limited choices with what distribution to install. Luckily, whilst Debian is no longer released with floppy disk netinst images, the old Etch repo’s still contain them. I’ve uploaded them here in case the etch repo’s are ever dropped.
The old HDD in the laptop had also died, so I decided to replace it with a 10GB relic from an old ThinkPad I had lying around. After removing all the screws from the base of the unit, I was still unable to pry the keyboard away from the shell. After ten minutes of Googling I stumbled upon this site, which gave me the final clue – I needed to remove the ‘hinge caps’ from around the hinges of the monitor.
To do so – you need to apply a fair bit of force, you may think you’re about to break the plastic – but as long as you’re only using your finger(nail)s you shouldn’t worry. Just pry each end of the cap away until it finally succumbs to the pressure. Following that there should be no more screws to unscrew, just lift the keyboard gently away – note that you’ll have to release the clips holding the three ribbon cables in place.
With the new hard drive installed and the floppy images written to disk – I booted up with the ‘boot.img’ floppy inserted. The installation is pretty painless, and it will prompt you for each disk in turn. I had both a PCMCIA 10/100 network card installed and a USB network jack installed, and to my surprise both were detected and installed correctly once I’d loaded both ‘net-drivers’ disks.
The installation took about an hour, and I decided to forego installing X during the initial installation. After first boot-up I had 31MB out of 64MB free =)
Stupidly, I then did a:
apt-get install xorg xfce4
A couple of minutes later and following a startx, I was presented with a somewhat basic, but functioning, X windows environment. However, doing a free -m revealed that I only had 1MB of RAM free - so X was promptly uninstalled.
I'm soon to buy a new battery for the unit so it can act as my permanent portable console.
* This probably has been done!
