Atheros Wireless N Card - Page 9

I'll see how it all goes with the DIR-655. I could use it as a AP for the Wife and printer to use.
Time will tell, I may hang it up and use the 3 aerials as Coat hangers

Yes I know, I havn't got the Broadcom card in the machine.
All this swapping over of cards is breaking my mini-PCIe slot, the little steel bracket that holds the card in is now loose but still works.
Taking the aerials off all the time is not ideal either.
What I could do is upload one of 2 INFs I made, I can't remember which I made last and used (have since formatted the HD)
So it's not forgotten.

Take off the back cove that holds the WLAN card and take off the front Bezel (plastic cover that has the LEDS and power button, from right to left)
Feed the aerial tip down the hinge from the right hand side !!, as far as it will go, there should be some spare slack .
Now feed the connector end through the hole where the other 2 aerials are also coming through.
Once through it will be in the WLAN connector bay.
Put card in attach the 3 aerials, I doubt it will maka any difference which aerial goes on what connector (I use from left to right - white, new, black)
Thats it, push any slock back down the hole as you don't want to crimp the cable with cover.
Start WIFIing.

I use WPA2 already on the Buffalo and all the tests done so far were on WPA2 I would not use anything else
$320 = ~ US$210, I know I can get it cheaper of Ebay but the posting always kills it.
No matter, I'm sacrificing my kids education for this

Modded Broadcom INFs are up.
You can find them here

My wife now has the Dell 1500 in her lappy, as the Gigabyte WI06 was giving her issues with only partially connecting to the net and not beign able to get emails but surfing worked.

The WinXP Dell Client Ultility is great never seen it before only Vista one where there is no way to have it log in.

The modded INF should have all the features in Vista that XP has.
Inclusing switch off WLAN when LAN cable is inserted
Not tested in Vista.

So feedback appreciated.

Feedback: No go. I uninstalled all my previous Broadcom drivers, and installed your INF with the latest driver (4.150.22.0). The "Disable Upon Wired Connect" option is now there in the Advanced tab of the driver, but regardless of whether it is enabled or disabled, it doesn't do anything. (in other words, when it is enabled, and I plug in my ethernet cable, the wireless stays enabled). Bummer.

It could just be a XP only setting, that is where I copied the registry settings from. I take it you don't have a hot key or switch ? for this function. But it installed with no other problems ? Vista drivers have still someway to go to get them to XP levels of usability. Wonder how long before we see descent Client Utilities come to Vista ?

Thanks! I take it that the antenna would not be too useful if I just left it in the bay where the wireless card goes like OxfordTec says to do...

You'll have a hell of a job to get all that cable and aerial in there.
You'd have to bend it all sorts of ways to get in in the bay.

The hinge lid is the easiest way to loose it all and be left with some cable to plug into the card, the hole for the WIFI bay is right by the right hinge.
This way all nice and neat with no bending of aerial and/or cables.

pieter,

I just left a post in the 1500 modded inf thread but thought I would post here as well.
I just got a killer deal on a 1505 and figured I would give it a go (if I don't like it, it will go into my father-in-laws laptop).
Will these modded inf's work with the 1505 as well?

This is under vista32.

TIA

D.

Should work just fine. Another big plus for Broadcom, the same INF and driver does both XP and Vista in both x86 and x64 versions. Another big plus is all the tweakable options that come with broadcom cards. The DIR-655 has left the distributor, I may get it tomorrow. One thought though, if I hit the road or went to a friends house, how do I use the WIFI. Even if the DIR-655 does fix the surfing, if I go away it will just cause parity errors unless I go to Atheros hotspots or tell my friends if you want to see me you have to have an Atheros router. I'll probably go to a Dell 1505 after all this testing and keep my ABGN router which works fine with it.

Hehe, I only use wireless maybe twice a month. You guys obviously make a living by it though.

I have the house setup wirelessly, Wife's laptop now with my old dell 1500 WLAN, my lappy and the HP wifi all in one printer, scanner, fax bla bla.
I'm sick of cables, the power cord is next to go if it was possible

Good to hear pieter.
And that is a very good point about using your system outside of the house.

zzpulp,
Yea, I have my NAS set up wireless so that everyone in the household can access pictures, home videos etc...
So, I also need a reliable and fast wireless setup.
(Plus, here in Japan the bandwith speed is WAY faster/cheaper than in the states) so having a fast wireless card to take advantage of that is essential.
Also, with a newborn... I need to be able to take my laptop around with me all over the house/friends houses etc... so that I can show pictures/videos, do my work etc... so I need good wireless.

I am just waiting for the 1505 to arrive and will see how it fairs.

D.

Yes WIFI and babies, what salvation.
Aybody says that Guys can't multitask are wrong, I can feed Emily (youngest @ 1) her bottle and surf here at the same time with wires this would be rather hard.
Reliable WIFI is a must, my DSL is @ 7.6M/896k down/up so speed is not of the essence but I have my external HD shared so the Mrs can access it as well to get at all the baby photo's

I would expect you get similar results as I got with the 1500 with your new 1505
I'll probably get one as soon as I'm done with the artheros gear and sell some of it off to get back some of the funds I've poured in to this project.

Ok, I hadn't looked into that bay recently and I haven't received the 10cm aerial yet so I didn't know if it would fit. Oxfordtec does say to stuff it in there but I didn't think that would be too useful and possibly prone to problems.

That is where the other aerials go as well, so I would have thought a very useful place.
Also very close to WLAN card and no bending or trying to take up all the slack.
Where you place the aerial is of little consquence, behind the keyboard, somewhere in the chassis, but the least amount of pulling machine apart is in the hinge.

Right DLink DIR-655 arrived this morning
Parity errors continue to happen as before
Switching the router to just 20Mhz makes it take longer to happen, and even longer with just 11g but they still happen.
Updated to FW1.05 and still the same.
Disabled DMA mode on the HD and DVD no go.
Memory removal no go.

I'm now really peaved, and can only suggest at this point if you own a Dell i9400/E1705 stay away from Atheros based cards.
The card works on Celly's M1710, could do with other peoples results with this.
I'll see if I can get hold of Atheros to force PIO mode on the card.
It may be related to this.

I'll play with the DIR-655 for a while, lots of features, but the Buffalo has them better laid out.
No 11a is abig negative, quite odd as Atheros were the first to implement it.
Some might find disabling mixed mode a bonus, which the buffalo can't do.
Other than that they do the same thing.

I'm still using the 5.3.0.35 drivers but every time I uninstall them, I get a parity error within 30 minutes.

Edit: I will get around to testing out the 6.x drivers this weekend

Sigh..and mine has already shipped...I just made an image of my machine and will install the 802.11n card and test it against my Trendnet Atheros based 802.11n router and see what happens. Did you mod the inf files at all to get the wifi light to work on the I9400?

There is hope yet
In a rage of fury, and some more knowledge on how Atheros does the hardware layering.
I've managed to get a working driver.
Not testet this for long enough yet to consider it a working one.

BUT I have 300Mbps and no parity errors, touch wood.
Running Vista x64 SP1 now as main partition, worked in non SP1 as well, but all this testing broke my Networking due to corrupt windows files
The Parity errors wreak havoc with the HD's as it's an instant crash and if the HD is writing it leaves a heap of corrupt files.
The fix also looks to work on non Atheros routers (not fully tested as modem is on Dlink)

Was up again till all hours of the morning.
Coffee I need coffee, the match stick leeping my eyes open broke under the pressure
I'll be back with more details later today after work.

Cool,

I am looking forward to your results.
Now, get some sleep!

D.

Sleep no time for that.
Been 5 hours now with no parity errors :woohoo:
I'm pretty sure now there should be no more with current settings.
The Buffalo Marvell based chipset works just fine at 300Mbps in both 11a and 11g with the Atheros WLAN card.
All this I've used the Sparklan card, I'll give the Gigabyte card a run later to make sure it works with this as well.

Performance for downloading files seems to be a little slower ~210KB/s vs 230KB/s
Not sure if this is www congestion or not.
But I should be able to put out an INF for anyone with parity errors.
I'll also include support for the older atheros chipset that ie the Gigabyte WI01 uses.

Routers, Atheros based DLink DIR-655 only does 135Mbps with Broadcom WLAN card
The Marvel based chipset router does 300Mbps with Atheros and 270Mbps with Broadcom WLAN cards so probably a better choice if mixed WLAN cards are used.

BUT the Dlink included Client utiliy is GREAT works in Vista x64 !!
The bundled Network manager is also very good and will come in usefull once more devices are added.
A big plus for the Dlink DIR-655 as the Buffalo AG300 Client Ultility doesnt work in Vista x64, and pretty well useless.
But the Net based setup is better set out by far on the Buffalo, so much easier to tweak and help for each settiing is on the page beside the options.

Cool to hear.
Now I just need to decide what to do.
1)Keep the 1505 that is shipped or get a new atheros card.
2)Get a Dlink 655, wait for the 855 or go for the Buffalo marvel based router.

Bah... still have a few days until the 1505-n arrives so I guess I will wait until then... but I REALLY need a new router as my last wireless n router took a dump a month ago and so I have been living off an older b/g router since.

D.