{OT} Yo, Dread, new Dell Wireless Drivers (maybe)

[Stone]

Dread,

I was thinking that there was a post a while back where we were all discussing our laptops and we found that you and I had similar laptops. I believe that you mentioned in that post that you were having some weird wireless problems too. In any case, I have a Dell Inspiron 5150 with the Truemobile 1400 internal wireless card and I thought that you said that you had the same. I was cruising the Dell site looking for driver updates and saw that they had released new wireless drivers for this card. There may be other cards that are being updated too, I didn't check.

Maybe these new drivers will help you with your troubles.

[Dreadnaught]

Thanks for the heads up!

How new are the drivers? I actually think I have the Truemobil 1300. I downloaded some new (IE late August 2003) drivers a few weeks ago, but they did nothing :(

[Stone]

I'm checking on the exact date right now but if I remember correctly, the drivers are from just a week or so ago. Also, the one driver covers most of their wireless cards. I know that it covers both the 1300 and the 1400 and maybe a few others as well.

Here's the exact info as quoted from the Dell site.

"Dell TrueMobile 1400 Internal Dual-band WLAN Card , TrueMobile 1300 Internal 802.11b/g MPCI, TrueMobile 1300 802.11 b/g PCMCIA, Wireless 1350 (802.11b/g) WLAN miniPCI Card, Wireless 1450 (802.11a/b/g) Dual-Band WLAN miniPCI Card, v.3.40.66, A02

File Date: 3/22/2004

Download this driver only if you reside in North America. This release supports the Dell Wireless 1350, 1450 series, and Dell TrueMobile 1300, 1400 series driver and client utility. "

[Dreadnaught]

Yay! I'm going to try it, though I probably won't get a chance to try it out for a few weeks. Thanks! :up:

[Stone]

You're up at University right now aren't you? Give it a go and see what sorts of open networks are out there. Could be a bunch of fun!

On a side note, what'd you do for Spring Break? Head any place warm or did you stay in New York?

[Dreadnaught]

Yup, I'm at college right now, desperately waiting to hear decisions from schools I'm trying to transfer to :)

The closest network is either at this place called the COOP or at the firehouse I'm a part of. The laptop works on those networks fine. The problem is that the wireless card won't work with WEP-enabled networks like the one we have at home.

I was basically home for Spring Break. New York City was really warm compared to up here, so it was just good enough for me. But my time home was divided into two chunks-- half of it was sitting on my ass. The other half was just plain crazy. From stopping friends from getting kicked out of bars and getting into scuffles with homless people trying to steal from my friends to getting Colin Quinn to insult my friend Micah and staying up all night...it was just nuts, I practically didn't sleep for about four days and was mostly drunk. Very fulfilling :)

But now I'm just burned-out on working and on this entire college. I really hope I'll be somewhere else next year and just start over at a better place *prays for Cornell*

How's the Alaskan spring coming along?

[sauron1]

Heh, not meaning to butt in, but I have a very similar setup. If I can help with the wireless card issues, just let me know (although I know Stone is an IT professional, so he's probably forgotten more than I'll ever know).

Nice to see that you're having a good Spring Break, Dreadie, good luck with the transfer. I was at the Jazz and Tapas at the Natural History Museum tonight with my daughter, very nice if you get the chance.

Stone - so how is the Alaskan Spring? I'm guessing it must be very pretty, but also pretty cold.

[Stone]

Ah yes, I remember my breaks from school! :up: At least, I'm pretty sure I remember them. My time is a little like that too when I go back down to Seattle to see my family. Basically I found that if I call all of my friends before I head down, my time is completely taken up with them and those activities and leaves very little time for things like shopping and stuff. (Shopping is important because the stores here lack anything that even looks like it might be perishable.)

Now my tack is to only call my little brother before I head down so that I can drop in on friends with little or no warning so things don't get over planned.

As far as spring goes, it's kinda hard to tell. It's really bright outside now with our days already being 13 hours or so long and gaining 8 minutes of daylight every day. It's weird but every week now brings an hour of extra daylight. Hard to explain to folks sometimes. I'm still amazed by it all. The temperature, on the other hand, isn't climbing very quickly. This morning it was around -21F with a windchill of something like -31F or so. Crazy! I'm really looking forward to the days when I can leave all of the cold weather gear at home.

My one bright spot on the horizon is a trip I have planned down to Peru in about a month or so. That should be a good time! Warm at least! :up:

[Stone]

(although I know Stone is an IT professional, so he's probably forgotten more than I'll ever know).

Hmm... I may get paid for what I do but I feel exactly the opposite about it. :) There are 12 and 14 year olds that know more about computers than I'll ever know. I was watching a coworkers son the other day playing UT2k4 on one of our work pcs after hours. He's like 5 or so and can PLAY! He's not getting his shock combos down, but he can fly and drive. It amazes me because I remember playing pong when I was his age. I can't even imagine what kind of skills let alone the kind of games he'll be playing when he's my age.

Like river once told me when he was talking about going back to school to study mathematics "Study it when you're young because math is a young person's game." That's exactly how I feel about computers.

[Dreadnaught]

It's hard to imagine a place colder than this, but Stone definitely gets the prize :cry:

Sauron- how dare you butt-in on a public thread!! :sour: :p ;)

It'd be great if I can do a lot of things in NYC. But we'll see what my schedule is in a few weeks. :D

How's it going at Sinai? Besides the usual insanity?

[jessica00]

try agere (orinoco) drivers..
i hear most of the truemobile brand is just rebaged orinoco hardware

[sauron1]

Originally posted by Dreadnaught
How's it going at Sinai? Besides the usual insanity?

Tell me about it. :p

But things are going good. The data coming off the microarrays is all checking out - it's all real. :)

[jessica00]

you..have a daughter? O-o
news to me...didnt think you were that old. :p

on the topic of wifi networks tho...a college around here has one that has no less than 1mbit and no more than a whopping 5mbit down...wired gets 6-8 mbit.
that was the first time i ever saw a file download speed ranked by MB in ie.

oh, and wardriving is a nice little hobby :)

[Stone]

Yep, wardriving is fun but with the amount of hotspots popping up now it's becoming easier and easier to get an internet connection. The town I live in now is going to turn the whole place into a hotspot. They've got 2 antennas up now and they're beaming free internet to whoever has a wifi device and knows how to set it up. The 2 antennas are enough to cover the whole town with pretty good coverage. At my house it's a little sketchy but it's there if I need it.

[jessica00]

thats awsome..theres something similar here, but you need line of sight to a mountain and a very directional antenna (modified dish network dish)

[MajorTom]

Speaking of daughters and microwave frequency wifi networks:

I worked in a microwave frequency environment for around 10 years. (Tac Air Navigation and radar)

It is a stastical fact among all the people I know who work in/on microwave stuff: They either have only daughters (like me) or have more daughters than sons.

[Stone]

Umm... Aren't you a little worried about that fact, Major? ;)

We're just starting to work with microwaves here in my environment. We're looking to get away from satellite bounces to each village and are instead looking at some point to point shots. Right now we've only got one site connecting a really remote site to us but it seems to be doing the job. We're carrying both data and ip phones over the signal and really the only major problem we're having is that the remote site keeps blowing fuses. They don't have electrity there except for a generator (like you can buy in most hardware stores) and have to keep shutting it off every day to check the fuel and oil status. :confused:

And thinking of wifi we're also beginning to mess around with some radios that connect our main phone switch to our satellite buildings around town. That way we bypass the local phone company (and its billing) and get ip phones to everone. Kind of a headache at the moment but slowly things are coming together.

If anybody wants an interesting IT job you should probably look to remote sites in Alaska :up:

[sauron1]

Originally posted by jessica00
you..have a daughter? O-o
news to me...didnt think you were that old. :p

Yep, I do indeed, 7 months old and cute as a button.

And hey, less wisecracking about the age. :D

[MajorTom]

Originally posted by Stone
Umm... Aren't you a little worried about that fact, Major? ;)



Nope, No sense in worrying about facts :weird:

We've talked about it a lot and joked a lot but no one has found a logical reason why.
Honestly, around 50 to 80 fathers I and my friends know (who work/ worked in the microwave field) have more daughters than sons.

What worries me, are the microwave sensors (automatic flushers) hid behind the tiles on public bathroom urinals.
Officially the reason for hidden sensors is: vandals won't damage things they can't see.
The real reason could be:
Since over 90% of all vandals are male, Microwave sensors are also a genetic solution to the problem?

btw. Wireless Lan and Hotspots run at microwave frequencies.
Generally at 2.4 Ghz which is also the frequency used to 'fry' eggs (and other stuff) in microwave ovens. :rolleyes:

[jessica00]

a microwave oven emiter is useless without its focusing thingy...

and wifi is FAR FAR FAR less powerful than the emiters in ovens. (100mw vs hundreds of watts)

[Red_Hex]

you what? yokels in deepest alaska get ****ing megabit wifi connections, while me in greenbelt, middle class england gets dicky 56k and 20 minute discons?

who sets these priorities? i want them shot

[Stone]

Well, my town is only 1/2 a mile wide and about 1 mile long and only holds around 3000 folks. Anybody who wanted to could've put up a couple of SOHO access points and accomplished the same task. The phone company is doing it as a "community service" and currently it is free while they're working the bugs out but I'll bet that they'll tie it into their paid for service. Also, having a fast wireless connection around town is great it all you want to do is access resources around town. Once you decide to access anything on the internet, we all have to share the same T1 connection up to a satellite and then bounce back down to an earth station someplace before we even get to a backbone that connects us to the internet proper. That all means that my ping to even the closest/fastest server for playing games is at the very minimum around 750. Totally unplayable for any fps unless you like spamming rockets or repairing your vehicles or base or whatever. Don't even think about trying to snipe.

[jessica00]

ouch.

[Red_Hex]

Originally posted by Stone
unless you like... repairing your vehicles or base or whateverah yes, repairing, that high-ping friendly yet semi-team oriented activity. i own at repairing. the last thing many a baseraper has killed before being removed by more competent players is me, with my repair pack out and a surprised and vaguely disgruntled look on my face.

[Stone]

Yeah, it does sort of suck but, hey, it's quality internet in that it doesn't drop off too often. Also, like I said, the whole town is sort of a big lan so anybody that wants to host a lan game, the connections are pretty quick.

I really can't complain too much. With the whole network being so small it's pretty easy to try things out. For example when we bought the wireless gear the fastest you could go was 11Mbs. Now there's accelerated gear that will go 54Mbs (and faster!) without too much trouble. Swapping out the gear only costs a couple of grand so the investment in the infrastructure isn't too prohibitive.

As far as gaming goes, I've made quite a career out of being a 'support' person! :up: In tribes I ruled with the repair, or else in T2 go invisible and take out the snipers that would camp around the base. Good times! :)

[sauron1]

Yup, I was quite the repairman in Tribes2. It was a good way to avoid leaving my base (which inevitably resulted in my immediate and messy demise). ;)

Looking forward to Tribes:Vengeance - Return of the Repairman, later this year. :D

(Actually, I've been playing so much BF1942 recently that I actually might not suck at T:V when it comes out, but we'll see).

[Red_Hex]

aha, fellow tribes players. repairing is so much more fulfilling in tribes than, for example, tending your sentry gun as an engineer in tfc. such is the quality of tribes in fact that general base dogsbodying is a superior experience to hardcore play in any other fps. i challenge the best ut players to keep turret/sensor farms, the gens, inven stations and vehicle pads all up, distribute deployables, spread mines, drive mpb's, detect cloakers, and still actually stop cappers. not for us, the glory of flagrunning.

so how do you get games up there in alaska? via airdrop, or does a team of huskies ferry them through every 6 months?

[Stone]

Waiting for Tribes:V too! :up: Everytime I fire up UT2k4 I'm reminded of how far ahead of their time the Dynamix team was when they released their game.

As far as how everything gets to us, we're completely without roads that actually go anywhere. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, has to either be flown in on regular jet passenger airplanes or it gets barged in during the 2 or 3 summer months when there isn't ice blocking the bay. It's weird to walk around town and look at the houses and cars. The cars come in one by one on jets configured to haul freight, and all of the houses come in as 2x4 sticks of lumber. It's sort of crazy sometimes. My buddy built his house here and after adding up all of the weight we figured that his house weighs in the neighborhood of 20,000 pounds which roughly equals out to 2 fully loaded Boeing 737 jets! :eek: As far as ordering games goes, I usually order from newegg and the mail seems to get delivered fairly quickly. I have had the odd postcard/letter take nearly a month to get here though!

[Red_Hex]

i see, i was actually joking but it turns out pretty close to truth. hmm...

hey, did you hear the one about red_hex finding hooge sacks of cash in his sock drawer?

...

ah, damn.

[jessica00]

if any one finds cash in their sock drawer, they should share it with this forum! =D

[MajorTom]

...And don't dry your socks in front of the "focus thingy":rolleyes: