Cæptain's Log

Posts Tagged ‘Atheros’

If you’re looking to get some serious wireless performance out of your netbook (this tut is for the Aspire One D150, but the general principle is the same for all of them) then you might consider adding an external RP-SMA jack + antenna to it.  A subtle addition is adding 802.11 N support.  Read my previous posts on the topic for more on that.  I positioned the antenna mount in place of the Kensington Lock, so if you can’t afford to sac your KLock then you may want to look for an alternate location (I found this to be the best location, imo).

This is a very simple mod to do; you need:

• Standard philips screwdriver
• Thin, flat yet stiff tool (xacto knife, razor blade, thin jewlers screwdriver, etc) to pop the keyboard (very tight)
• Dremel Tool, small drill or similar device for tooling plastic
• U.FL pigtail to RP-SMA Male cable; mine was 12″ but I think 6″ should do; you want a nut / lock washers too
  • Optional: RP-SMA Male – Female Right angle adapter for a better antenna placement across the back
• RP-SMA antenna – whatever works for you
  • Optional: 802.11N Mini-Pci card – refer to previous posts on topic

Start by gutting the netbook and unscrewing everything you see.

Use your flat tool to pop off the keyboard.  There is one spring-loaded tab above the F8 key that needs to be depressed; the remaining tabs are on the sides and are part of the bezel.  This is challenging if you are unfamiliar with the process – be gentile but don’t be afraid to use some force to pop the keyboard out.  You may want to use more than one tool to assist in getting under the keyboard to pop it off.  Disconnect all the ribbon cables you see and unscrew the bezel.  Pop her off.

Here is an exposure of the right side – the yellow tape is the backside of the PCI slot; that is where your cable needs to end.  Notice the black and white cable running from said location up to the right joint – right next to the KLock.  These are the existing antenna wires.  Leave them alone – no reason to remove them.

Locate the Kensington Lock here.  It’s attached to the case with 2 plastic mushroom plugs.  These are not intended to be removed, so you will need to tool them off.  They go without much of a fight or mess.

Note the bit I used on my Dremel Tool – very nice for this application (it’s a drum cutting bit of sorts).

Next you need to tool a larger hole in the side of the case for the SMA mount.  Take your time and be gentile – I emphasized on the right (short) side of the hole, and the remainder space was completely covered with my small washer – it works seamlessly.

Mount the SMA adapter in the hole.  This can get tricky depending on how your cable was made because the hinge mount passes under where the lead is still fixed in place.  Don’t jerk your lead around or you may disconnect the wire from the jack.  You should unscrew the hinges and place the jack in the hole, then gently return the hinges to their mounts.  It may take some troubleshooting skills to get it to work, but it’s not difficult by any means.

Now you just route your new antenna wire on with the other 2, return everything to normal (take your time) and plug your antenna into a U.FL jack on your card.  If you went with a .11N card, you need all 3 antennas; I used the far #3 plug for the external ant.  I don’t know the mechanics but it should work in any configuration.  G card users can just leave one of their antennas free and should be fine – if you ever intend to upgrade to N in the future you are now N capable!

I can’t attest to the performance gain from just replacing an internal antenna with an external one, but if you used an N card with a compatible N router (I went with XSpan .11N 2.0) then I can confirm a working (theoretical) 300 Mbps wireless connection.  To top it off, I’m using Madwifi drivers and can confirm their functionality as well.

Thanks for following this development – comments are welcome.

I’ve done some research on Atheros’ XSpan tech, and surprisingly most of the press releases are only a day or 2 old.

Apparently the 802.11N draft is in version 2.0, which is now professedly extremely stable, but yet still relies greatly on compatible technologies as each company has it’s own style of 11N.

XSpan is actually a chipset technology for their 11N 2.0, and only a few commercial products posses it so far.

The Atheros card I mentioned (AR5008E-3NX) was actually the first N card to be approved for miniPCI-E standards, so I’m pretty solid on picking one up now.
The questions that I’ve now brought up deal with router compatiblity.

Apparently N tech is extremely picky, even to the point of non-functionality between 2 N devices.  You have to have a compatible N variant on both the card and the router.

Luckily I’ve found a handful of routers that are confirmed to be using the XSpan chipset, and the most impressive one I found was the Belkin N1 and it’s smokin’ hot sister, the N1 Vision.

Check out the pictures.
I’m pretty positive I’m spending what little funds I have for this project on this set up:

Atheros AR5008E miniPCI-e card

A UFL to SMA Pigtail cable to connect the 3rd antenna to the card (I own several antennas with ufl connectors on them, from simple little black ones like you would get stock with a pci card, to a badass ‘plate’ dish).  This is where the actual hacking is gonna take place, since I need to dremel a hole in a suitable location on the side of my computers case to mount the connector and route the cable to the card.

Belkin N1 Vision Router – gonna go used and try to score one for less than $100.

I plan on ordering everything today so that it can get shipped out first thing monday.

I’ll post back then.

As my first post for this site I wanted something good and something that wouldn’t completely alienate me from the rest of the world (being an Anarcho-Capitalist I spend most of my social networking time writing about economics, and people are either extremely impressed, or more likely just get pissed and block me).

I also wanted a site more about technology and hacking (and pirating) than just about politics and economics.  So here this is.

I got a post-pre-order (fresh off the assembly line, but not fresh enough to get the ‘uber’ battery everyone was talking about) Acer Aspire One D150.

Aspire One D150 Open Top View

These bad boys use a 10″ ultra-unnecessarily-high-gloss screen, atom 1.6ghz, upgraded to 2gb ram, intel gma 950-ish video chip, gmaboosted to 400mhz, 120gb 7200rpm hdd with a mostly windows xp sp3 partition and an extra 20gb partitioned off for Ubuntu Netbook Remix as a backup / toy with OS (I appreciate linux for everything it’s worth and more, but I’m an IT professional and I need to use windows, since I’m still a Linux noob and need to have expert control of my OSes).

Now the main reason I got a netbook, the main reason why ANYBODY gets a netbook, is a 60/40 combo of portability / price.  On my shitty freelance budget, I can barely afford anything.  I also was using an Acer Aspire 9815whki before I got this netbook and if you google some pictures on that then you can only imagine the amazing feeling I had rush through me when I was able to pick my computer up and carry it with me all around the house – it is the greatest thing to someone who has been deprived of this his whole life.  I felt (still do) like someone who just upgraded from a bag phone to an iphone.

I recently caught some pics of the new Aspire One 571 and shat bricks.  I JUST bought this thing and it already feels ancient.  The new upgrade is atheistically exactly the same, but it comes with 720p support (higher resolution screen AND faster video processing) with it’s Quartics Q1721 card, it’s also got a 1.66ghz updated atom processor,  AND it’s got a prototype Vmedia blu-ray / umd hybrid thing that’s real cyberpunk looking but would probably flop and just add to the cost / take up space.  If they had a Vmedia burner… then I would go sell some organs for that baby, but until I get my hands on the minimum $500 it’s gonna cost, I’ll have to settle for my crappy (still awesome) D150.

Now on to my new project idea.

Inside the (currently) new aspire one, which unlike it’s 8.9″ ancestor has access panels, we get ONE slot for ram, which I’ve heard is hardware (or maybe bios) nerfed to an arbitrarily slow clockspeed, ONE sata drive slot, and ONE mini-pci slot in a cramped little space which is currently occupied by the wifi card – meaning unless we go for a 2-in-1 card then we NEED to leave it that way.

I saw some kits on ebay that are just an adapter that you can solder a simcard port into and enable 3G HSDPA for your netbook, but I not only don’t use a wireless carrier that uses sim cards (I use Alltel, which just got bought by Verizon), I’m not really interested in paying for an epic data plan that I would use as much as I use now.

Instead I decided I would hack my netbook a badass wireless card.

I caught a glimpse of this card, and I’m very excited.

It’s an Atheros AR5008E-3NX

This really gave me a nerd hardon:

Supported Data Rates
IEEE 802.11a 6 to 54 Mbps
IEEE 802.11b 1 to 11 Mbps
IEEE 802.11g 6 to 54 Mbps
XSPAN 6.5 to 300 Mbps 

IEEE WLAN Standard Over-the-Air (OTA) Estimates Media Access Control Layer, Service Access Point (MAC SAP) Estimates
802.11b 11 Mbps 5 Mbps
802.11g 54 Mbps 25 Mbps (when .11b is not present)
802.11a 54 Mbps 25 Mbps
802.11n 200+ Mbps 100 Mbps

XSPAN 300Mbps theoretical!!  FUCK YEAH!

I’m gonna do as much research on this XSPAN shit as I can.  I have a hacked Linksys router sporting DD-WRT but I’m gonna need an N router to get full service from this bad boy.  This sounds sweet.

Since this is a tri-antenna N card, I’m picking up some of this:

and I’m gonna hook up one of my ridiculous antennas from my desktop apartment wifi hacking days and mount it to my new net-war-book.

I’ll post back when I get more research done on XSPAN and get some parts and plan my surgery.

Thanks for reading the first post to this site – more to come, definitely.