Cæptain's Log

Posts Tagged ‘Hacks’

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.