for keeping track of my digital experiments

After some searching around on the Google machine, I came across “Linux wireless LAN support“. It’s one of the most complete directories I’ve seen for a very long time. I had a suspicion that my DWL-G510 pci card might work, as it is old enough and I’ve read about other similar models of D-Link card being supported natively. It turns out that mine works seamlessly with stuff from the MadWifi project. Because I was feeling lazy and wanted a tried and true install method, I found “How To Install MadWifi On Debian 4.0 (Etch)” by Sumardi Shukor. The following is based on the article on his blog.

vi /etc/apt/source.list [add "contrib non-free" after "main" to the various lines]
apt-get update
apt-get install build-essential module-assistant wireless-tools
module-assistant
module-assistant auto-install madwifi-source
modprobe ath_pci
ifconfig ath0 up [bring up the wireless interface]
iwlist ath0 scanning [scan for a wireless network to connect to]

I suggest using a GUI app to do the rest, such as wicd.

For those of you who don’t know about DirecTV2PC … check it out! It’s pretty awesome (if you have a Windows PC and a DirecTV DVR).

Here is what I did to get DirecTV2PC working in my Local Area Network with two HR20 set top boxes.

1. Go to http://www.directv.com/directv2pc and click the Download Beta button on the right side of the page
2. When the pop-up comes up, click Continue to Beta download
3. Click Download Now to download the DirecTV PC Playback Advisor application to see if you pc is up to running the DirecTV2PC application.  Once you finish the download run the installation and then run the application. The application sometimes falsely identifies your system specs. As long as your PC is running Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or Windows Vista with Service Pack 1, a 2Ghz processor, and 512MB ram you should be good to go.
4. If you PC passes the application or you believe it should be able to handle the application according to the rules of thumb  I laid out in the previous step, then enter your name and email on the page and click the Submit button. The DirecTV2PC application download will then start. It is a 32 MB file, but it may take awhile to download. The average speed I rolled for the download was 20kb/sec. It took about 30 minutes to download … atrocious! Once your download completes, you will be sent an activation code to the email you provided earlier. Edit (1/22/2009): You only have to start the download, then you will be emailed an activation code. I put the application up on my data server, and you can download the DirecTV2PC app here. You will get a better download speed than 20kb/sec!
5. Run the installer and fill out the various fields.
6. Now run the application, for the application to properly activate you will need to:
   • be connected to the Internet
   • open TCP port 443 (incoming and outgoing) on your router’s firewall
   • open your PC’s firewall for the DirecTV2PC application (you should be automatically prompted by Windows)
7. If the application still does not activate properly, that means that your ISP’s DNS servers have not updated Cyberlink’s new IPv4 address for the A record activation.cyberlink.com. (Or Cyberlink is jerking around with their IPv4 addresses again … bah!)
   Here is what you do:
   add exactly what is in quotes: “203.73.94.101 activation.cyberlink.com”
   to the file “c:/windows/system32/drivers/etc/hosts” (if your main hard disk drive is lettered “c”)
8. Enjoy your DVR’s movies!

It turns out that the only problem with my wiring was the heads. I couldn’t use my custom wiring schema for Gigabit Ethernet purposes. I changed the wiring for my Gigabit connections to the TIA/EIA 568B standard. Now the only limitation on my Gigabit speed is the processor and bus speed of my GX240 Optiplex. I’m pulling 170 – 200Mbps out of the thing to my Debian based file server. You might find the following wiring diagrams helpful: