120 new of 290 responses total.
HOW does he turn it on and who is 'the local provider'?
dial a # the voice message should tell you who the local cell provider is
How do we dial a number without turning it on first? If it is sitting in the cradle it is lighted and has some writing on the screen, but when removed from the cradle it is blank. Does this mean the battery has too little current?
push the red button and hold it down for 10 seconds, it should turn on. You wouldn't know anyone who has a used bike for sale cheap.
Kiwanis has used bikes for $10. Reuse Center has used bikes for negotiable prices, probably $10. If you promise to keep the bike indoors when you are not using it, Jim could tune up whatever you bought if you biked it to us, which is easy to do from Kiwanis. Look for something with the newer style of brakes that does not say Murray or Huffy or Sears on it. Aluminum wheels are also better quality, lighter and don't rust. Jim might be willing to meet you at Kiwanis some time. We gave away our extra bikes already.
Tracfone (and probably other prepaid mobile phone companies) use phones with custom firmware that prevents their use with a different provider and prevents people from using phones from other service providers. Keesan: let me know if you need a Tracfone.
Thanks, but our friends appear to have given up on the idea of a cell phone. They tried one 2 years ago and left it recharging since then.
I should post a rant to the electronics conference about equipment designed with defective charge circuits that can cook a battery. A wireless LAN should be a feature of my next home. I will even install one here if I am able to arrange broadband service. DSL would probably be least expensive, but as mentioned in the telephone wiring item I'm struggling to get a phone jack installed. :-/
Jim asks, if you have DSL and a network, does the main computer need to be left on all the time in order to use the DSL on another computer? If so, I presume you don't need monitor or keyboard, and maybe you can run it from RAM and have the hard drive powered down. How much power would a server like this use? He is thinking about using one wireless PCMCIA network card to share a neighbor's DSL, then cabling a couple of other computers to that one. We have a desktop PCMCIA slot for the card.
I would think so as how else would the wireless card get power? We also have a Ethernet LAN for two Macs, but have a separate wireless adapter on the network - i.e., not in one of the computers but plugged into the LAN.
Re: #179. To use DSL on more than one computer, the best idea is to get a router which allows you to connect it to an ADSL "modem". The router then connects to the computers; either by wires, or wirelessly. (Some routers have both wireless and wired connections, typically 32 of one and 4 of the other).
We don't have DSL service, the neighbor does. We want to pick up his service wirelessly and then wire our computers together with network cable. We have a hub. We don't need 32 connections. Someone gave us a box with a wireless router and a wireless PCMCIA ethernet card and we have a PCMCIA slot in one desktop computer. Do we need the router or just the card? We can connect our computers via nullmodem cable and share a phone connection that way (telnet from one to the other, or use kermit to connect). This is not important, we can just try to make DSL work on one computer in the living room and listen to streaming audio with it. I am giving up on the Detroit classical station, it has too many 30 sec noisy commercials and traffic reports from 3:30 to 7:00 pm, which is when I would have listened to it because the other stations stop playing music then. We could run the sound from the sound card to the digital piano as Aux in, but I think it is optimized to sound like a boomy grand piano. First we need to get ndiswrapper working to use this wireless card in linux.
I would be very carefull about setting up a wireless network with a neighbor in order to share broadband internet. Without said neighbor's permission, this is clearly illegal. However the law concerning a neighbor sharing such a connection is still a bit hazy and I wouldn't want to be the first person to have to defend myself against a phone company's lawyers.
A different neighbor was going to let us use his but he moved. They were thinking of Pringle antennas between houses a few houses away. Of course we would have permission. How would it hurt the ISP? The neighbor might experience a slightly slower connection if we listened to the radio at 32K/sec on their 1.5MBit/sec connection. Jim points out that if people don't want to share their connections they can set up a password to use them. We have udhcpc, they would probably run some server for udhcp with password required. How does this work with wireless connections at libraries? We are still nowhere near having a usable wireless network card since the stupid thing was designed to require Windows. SOmeone in our group tried to compile ndiswrapper to let linux use the Windows driver for the card. There may also be a linux module for a new kernel available.
> How would it hurt the ISP? Lost revenue. The question is, whose service is your internet connection? Is it the ISP's, or is it your's after you have bought it? This is quite a grey area, but precedence is on the ISP's side, and theft of service laws do have some teeth. > Jim points out that if people don't want to share their connections > they can set up a password to use them. I think that is a dangerous attitude to have. You cannot trespass onto someone's property because they left the gate unlocked, just as you cannot trespass onto someone's computer network because they didn't know to set a password. This is something I tell kids who think "war driving" is cool: Do you really want to be at the mercy of some old guy who doesn't know how his wifi works being told by the police that he needs to press charges because that will prevent these things from happening again? For them, its a good way to ruin their lives.
Actually, you can enter someone else's property if their gate is unlocked. In order for there to be any reasonable chance of a trespassing charge, the owner has to somehow ask you to leave. This can be done in person, or can be done by posting signs, or any number of other ways. Heck, if you leave your front door unlocked someone can even enter your house and you can't charge him with breaking & entering (since there was no breaking) or much of anything else unless you can somehow show intent to do something illegal. Unlike homes, however, ISPs do have terms of service, and they typically permit sharing the service only within members of the same immediate household living at the same address (that's what Comcast's says, for exaxmple.) Tapping into your neighbor's ISP isn't any different from tapping into your neighbor's cable signal because you don't want to pay for HBO.
I imagine there are ways to set up a shared network though. I know that there was a woman who was going to buy the house next door and she had a plan where she was going to get some super fast connection and then share it with me and with the neighbor on the other side of her. I dont know what kind of connection she was thinking of getting but she thought it would cost $150/mo. I imagine that would have been a different situation than DSL or Cable.
re #184 Yagi pringle antennas are neat if you can mount them well. Good luck with that.
I got a wireless network router (Linksys) and some adapters, and have networked a couple of Windows 98 computers in the kids' rooms. My stepdaughter is getting a computer from the Rotary Club in a couple of weeks. When she gets it we'll move the router to her room, a more central location for our network, and then it should work a little better for everyone. I don't know anything about network security. The network is wide open right now. How risky is this, and how should I deal with it?
re #189 Setup WEP on your router and the Wireless machines. You're basically broadcasting everything you do on your computer and also opening yourself up to who knows what.
Re #179: Generally you would leave your DSL modem and router on all the time and power up computers as you use them. I would guess about 20W max. continuous. Re #190: WEP is trivial to crack, so offers no significant protection.
re #191 Car door locks are also trivial but they deter most that may be tempted. Defense in depth starts with simple security. Why would you not recommend a simple configuration? Does jep live in Fort Knox or something?
Re #189: also choose a more cryptic SSID and create a closed network (so that the SSID is not brodcast to any passing computer). I keep hearing different opinions about the security of WEP - if the password is changed now and then I thought it was pretty secure.
re #193 The neighbors were leeching bandwidth off my wireless router for several months before I realized it. When I put the clamps down on the WEP setup then there was a noticable difference in performance. Normally, I SSH for most of my online transactions but for the layman I'd recommend securing your entrypoint to the router.
Re resp:191: It's "trivial" in the sense that it's been automated, but cracking WEP requires capturing a significant amount of traffic. Unless jep has a lot of network traffic going on, someone's going to have to capture data for several days before they'll stand a good chance of cracking his key. (And of course they'll be foiled if he changes his key during that time.) WEP isn't secure in the sense computer professionals use the word "secure," but it does act as a deterrent to casual leechers and eavesdroppers.
WEP - Windows Entertainment Pack? We don't have a router or ADSL modem. How much power would a computer draw with the monitor turned off and hard drive powered down? There would be no loss of service to an ISP if someone who would not buy broadband service borrowed a very small fraction of it. The phone company used to consider it illegal to have your own phone instead of renting a phone from them, or to have extension phones when it became legal to own your own phone, not that it cost them anything. People would turn off the ringers on the extension phones so the company would not know about them.
WTF? You said in #182 that you have a router, now you say you don't have one? Using someone else's broadband to check your email once a week would be using a "very small fraction" of the service. Using it to stream music for three and a half hours a day is not a "very small fraction."
You need both a router and some sort of network card. You don't usually get to pick and choose the number of connections your router can support other than by selecting one model over another. Just because your router supports 32/64/a gazillion connections doesn't mean you have to use them all.
We are not planning to use the router, just the wireless card, to learn how to use a wireless card, and play 32K streaming audio, which is a very small fraction of 1500K DSL line. Jim's 'ISP' connection is simply too unpredictable to listen to music with - anywhere from 5K to 0K/sec downloads and you get bumped off whenever they feel like it. 3/150 is about 2%. We succeeded in getting the digital piano to play through headphones (phone jack) and through the receiver (AUX out), and (badly) from the tape deck into the piano (AUX in) and recorded my playing directly to the tape deck. The AUX in has a great deal of static. Jim says we won't need radio now, we can just record all the great piano music after getting free sheetmusic downloads. He also plugged into the headphone jack a little gadget that broadcasts FM to the nearest receiver, and it sounded awful but recognizable. Does anyone know how to construct the cable that plugs into the round MIDI jack at the back and then into the sound card MIDI (game port) port (or does it plug into line out?)? I will look online for the wiring diagram. I want to try playing piano midi music on the piano from the sound card. Who needs broadband to check email when there is grex?
Re #192: I don't know jep's circumstances but I'm about to deploy two wireless LANs, one of which will be at home. I don't have anything top secret, but would still prefer to keep my information private unless I explicitly publish it for some reason. I have heard that WPA is less insecure than WEP, but I'm thinking of going further by using additional software to encrypt everything that gets sent over the wireless LAN. Re #195: My wireless LAN will see a significant amount of traffic. Re #196: I have a computer with a good power supply that burns 27 Watts most of the time it's switched on. Other machines may require more power. Re #199: This is a guess, but it's worth a try. Please let me know PC MIDI if it works, so that I can add it ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ to my notes. Use sheilded cable 4 GND ---- RX- 5 and connect the shield to pin 2 12 TXD ---> RX+ 4 on the MIDI connector. Leave the shield unconnected at the PC end.
I do not rely on WEP or WPA for my wireless. Any encryption I need is performed in different layers.
Could you explain to me what RX means? Do we need only two wires connected? The midi port looks like a keyboard plug. Linksys (who made our wireless card) says they only support Windows. Realtek (who made the chip on it) has a lot of broken links to Mac and Linux (source code) drivers. Someone else posted an alpha version of a driver for this chip, source code, which requires that I have kernel source code for 2.4 or 2.6, which I need to get and unpack into about 100MB on my computer in order to be able to compile one little module (102K for Windows, by Realtek). Is there some way to compile a module without the entire kernel source code? Can I read the Makefile and just put in the parts it needs?
RX usually means 'receive'. TX is usually 'transmit'.
And here is a schematic of a midi cable: http://www.cryogenius.com/hardware/sbmidi/
re 202: most drivers can be built outside the kernel tree, but you might need at least the kernel headers installed - depending on the disrto, you might require the kernel-devel package or equivalent.
Slackware. So I install just the kernel headers for 2.4.31 and then do a 'make'? I followed a link at the URL cited for cryogenics and found the schematics for the SB $50 MIDI cable, which requires 1 diode, 2 resistors, an OptoIsolator and an IC (with transistors in them) and a plug ends for gameport, MIDI IN and MIDI OUT (5 pin) which we might have around but not the IC and OptoIsolator. I wonder if this would let me also record MIDI files to the computer (from MIDI out) with the right software.
For any compilation it's supposed to be the headers for the kernel libc was compiled under, and for compiling kernel modules I'm pretty sure it has to match the kernel you'll be trying to use the module under.
I'm not familiar w/ slack, haven't touched it in a dozen years at least, but I'd expect to unpack my driver source somewhere and be able to run make in the directory, maybe with a configure first (that might show some library dependency), unless it's one of those rare ones that actually use bits of ones existing in the kernel tree, then you'd need the lot. If my memory serves me correctly the MIDI interface use a current loop, hence the need for couplers, and is a serial interface, with one transmit loop (TX) and one to receive (RX).
The INSTALL file said to just 'make', not make config or configure. Do the kernel headers come with a .config file or would I need to get hold of the one used to compile the 2.4 kernel I will use with this module and copy that to /build along with kernel headers?
My circumstances are that I have a wireless network with 3 (soon to be 4) computers sharing cable modem service. I use the Internet a fair amount and so do the kids, for e-mail, music downloads, games, on-line banking, chat, random browsing and homework. If I need WEP, I guess I'll figure out what it is and how to install it or turn it on. If I need more than that, please someone let me know. I will appreciate it very much!
I installed kernel-headers and they did not go into /lib/modules/2.4.31/build, where .config was supposed to show up, so I also apparently need kernel source code, or at least the .config file from it. In addition, the 2.4.31 kernel headers overwrite the ones in /usr/src/linux-2.2.16/include/linux (because of the way the symlinks are set up, because they installed into /usr/include/linux, which is symlinked to /usr/src/linux-2.2.16/include/linux). Will this be a problem if I want to compile another 2.2.16 kernel some time? They are dated 1998-2005 and have no mention of the kernel version, so maybe they are just updates that will also work with older versions. I need to get hold of the 37MB of source code now.
/lib/modules/<kernel-version>/build, if it exists, should be a symlink to /usr/src/linux-<version>. Did you look there?
There is no such symlink on my computer, should I make one? I now have 2.4.31 kernel headers in the 2.2.16 directory. Should I rename it, and then reinstall 2.2.16, and make the symlink? I tried making the symlink and since I don't have kernel source on this computer yet there is no .config file. It would be easier to get an older wireless card from ebay than to get this stupid WIndows one to work with linux.
Orinoco wireless cards work very well with Linux.
Do you have an extra one you want to give us? It is against our rules to buy anything we can get for free. Jim is going to modify keyboard plugs to make 180 degree 5-pin DINs and maybe chop the 15-pin DB off a joystick. First he has to remove the rubber outer part of a roller to try to make a subpad out of it for a laser printer that feeds all the sheets at once. THe official replacement costs $10.50 plus shipping. In the meantime he has had it apart a few times to clean it, and I feed one page at a time. And someone returned a working laser printer we lent them in 2001.
It is against our rules to buy anything we can get for free. Amen!
Re #202: Only two wires connected all the way through, not counting the shield which you only connect at one end.
Sorry, all I have is a Linksys 802.11G card. It is why I have to run Windows XP on my laptop. :(
Grr. tell me about it. I have an internal card that is turned off and on via a switch that appears not to work in FreeBSD (or Linux). After days of trying to get the damn thing to work, I gave up and created a VMWare guest for it. Works great! Tip: set the applications priority in the task manager to "RealTime"
re#218: no ndiswrapper? #219: what card?
ndiswrapper is a resource hog and my laptop isn't that fast. :)
I have to buy a couple of wireless ethernet adaptors. One will be USB since my iBook doesn't have PC-Card or Cardbus slots. I could conceivably add an internal Airport card, but a USB adaptor is more portable between machines. It will almost certainly be a Linksys WUSB11, since that's one that NetBSD supports. The other could be PCI, but I don't know yet which to buy.
I may have the same Linksys card. Maybe those of you more knowledgeable can compile that rtl8180.o module for your own systems, if not mine. I just tried to recompile a 2.4.31 kernel and it no longer recognizes memory cards so I added back a few things I had taken out (having to do with USB storage) and recompiled it and now the modules again. If this works I will make one try at the module but I compiled a kernel without Wireless LAN support to make it smaller and would have to recompile it one more time. I had no idea which device we have in their list so I said N instead of Y or M. We do have a Win98 laptop computer from the neighbor and will try the card in there at the library, for educational purposes (and we can download linux kernel source code with it there via 98SE).
Oh, back on the issue of a la carte cable channels, recent news reports have confirmed what I've always suspect but hadn't seen in print -- the biggest single reason why basic cable costs so much is ESPN. It's the most expensive channel in the typical basic lineup, $2-3 per month even though only something like 30% of the households paying for it actually watch it, and the cost gets even worse when you bundle in the other critical add-ons like ESPN2 and The Golf Channel (myself I'd rather watch The Flannel Channel.) Apparently the FCC has started to warm up to the idea of a la carte, but I still suspect it will get derailed somehow. Disney will lose billions in market cap if they can't continue making money from people who don't watch. But I'll just put those extra costs on my mental list along with the taxes I'm paying to make payments on the Kingdome and such.
Re: #222. That depends on what drivers you want to use. If you want to use the madwife (aka madwifi) drivers (or their NetBSD equivalent, whatever that may be), then I suggest looking VERY HARD at compatbility and getting, if at all possible, a guarantee from the vendor that if the card does not work *on NetBSD* then you may return it. Given that I believe the problem with my broadcom internal wireless card was the on-off switch built in to th laptop; that an external card of any sort shouldn't have one; and that i downloaded broadcom chipset drivers from linksys which appeared to interface well with the card, i should say that linksys drivers with an external wifi card and ndiswrapper should work a charm. (ndiswrapper is a wrapper for proprietary windows network drivers which, by emulating the Windows Network Device Interface System, trick the drivers into thinking they are running on Windows instead of Linux or the BSDs.)
How much memory does ndiswrapper take up? Our best laptop has 32MB. Someone at my linux list will give another try at rtl8180 driver. My 2.4.31 kernel works with glibc but not libc5 linux, don't know why, and finds the USB memory stick, but I have no idea how to compile for PCMCIA so can't use the wireless card with it if I compile it for 2.4.31 (which INSTALL says requires hacking, 2.6 does not).
ndiswrapper sounds hideous. The vast majority of vendors, when asked about NetBSD, Linux or whatever will simply say "we only support MS Windows". My understanding is that the WUSB11 is supported by NetBSD's native atu(4) driver, but there is always the risk that a vendor will switch chipsets without changing a product's model number or packaging. Gits. I faced a similar risk with a recent webcam purchase. Happily the NetBSD people were kind enough to bring the spcaview in pkgsrc up to the latest version, which included support for my camera.
re #227: there's nothing particularly awful about ndiswrapper and it's very, very useful in cases where the manufacturer (I'm looking at *YOU*, Broadcom..) won't release details necessary to implement a native driver. The Dell laptop I use for work has a built-in broadcom wireless chip that isn't supported by Linux except through ndiswrapper. However with the hardware emulation mode that ndiswrapper provides it works very well (better, seemingly, than it does in Windows, as odd as that may be..)
Re: #226. Sorry, I've no idea how much memory ndiswrapper takes up, as I'm not using it at the moment. But my comments on the subject were addressed to ball. Re: #227. More hideous than running UN*X under VMware? More hideous than having no net access or not running UN*X at all? Re: 228, Broadcom: Let's look together. re: 228, ndiswrapper: Hah. Hahah. Hahahah. Oh, I larfed.
Somebody with ndiswrapper please let us know its memory usage before I bother with it. DSL (50MB of Debian on live CD) may support it if you download an extra package of applications. Ubuntu Live might support it too, but we don't have 128MB of RAM on our laptops to run that huge GUI in (it won't run at all with less, not sure if DSL will accept 32MB). I will try the card once in Win98 at the public library. My 2.4.31 kernel won't work at all with USB - crashes with uhci. I modelled it on something that works and just added usb-uhci (as module) and removed a bunch of things that did not look essential (various USB scanners, cameras, serial adaptors, ISDN modems). My kernel config is at http://keesan.freeshell.org/bl/2.4.31/configsy.431 - all help appreciated. And when I tried using this setup to compile rtl8180 it would not compile anyway and INSTALL says I need to hack Makefile for 2.4, and 2.6 is easier. 2.6 takes too much RAM and is ridiculous for a 100MHz laptop computer.
Re #229: More hideous than finding natively supported hard- ware, although in some cases (such as hardware built into laptops) I can see that's not always practical.
This response has been erased.
> And Running Unix sucks. As opposed to what? Windows?
This response has been erased.
I suspect Plan 9 has more scant hardware support even than NetBSD ;-)
This response has been erased.
Out of interest though, what makes Plan 9 good?
Having more than one machine spare! And sorry, but they got the Plan 9 windowing system VERY wrong, unless they now believe in dictating policy as well as implementation. In which case, both the windowing system and they are wrong.
Re #238: ?
?[3~[3~
This response has been erased.
> they get it in their heads that the way Linus et al do it is the One > True Way This is probably because Linux is the first unix-like operating system these people have ever used. It was pretty much that way with me.
Hey, at least Linux and X11 are actually used by lots of real people to get useful stuff done. Plan 9 seems to be mainly a platform for generating superior attitudes and academic papers on operating system design.
Re #241: I'm not so sure about Linux, but I like X. I like the ability to run a client program on whatever machine happens to be most appropriate and have its output display to (and keyboard/pointing device input from) whatever machine happens to be in front of me. I also like the fact X makes no attempt to dictate my choice of window manager. I imagine X predates Linux and it's developed by different people.
This response has been erased.
X works for me. It's nice that it's cross-platform too. Is Plan 9's windowing system confined just to Plan 9?
This response has been erased.
I think there's also an X11 wm that's meant to look like rio. You're right, Dan. X11 DOES suck. And so does UNIX, whatever flavour. The trouble is, they're SO much better than That Other System in SO many ways, and Plan 9 is SO little known, that its suckiness is (almost) irrelevant. Now, if I'm wrong about the window manager thing, then fine. But don't assume I'm just some ignorant Linux fanboy. I also use (and happen to prefer) FreeBSD on one machine. I can also see lots of areas where linux went wrong, like kernel module support. But I suspect that unless you're a kernel programmer (which I'm not), and/or you have a few machines kicking around that you can power constantly just to have a distributed OS (which I don't), then Plan 9 really wouldn't look much more attractive to you than Linux/BSD. (As an aside, imho Plan 9 still doesn't do device management correctly: /dev/dev/ and /dev/devctrl is certainly an improvement over /dev/dev/ and ioctrl, but the OS should include facilities for decoding whether what's written to /dev/dev is a command or data, instead. As for the bad old days; point taken. But I know that lots of people prefer, and always have preferred, developing for UNIX rather than Windows, and developing for Mac OS Classic (especially early versions) sounds like a nightmare. Let's face it, aside from some shining lights (now sadly mostly dimmed), programming graphical applications on just about ANY platform in the eighties must have been the GUI equivalent of batch-mode-only OSES. Did I mention it sounds painful?
This response has been erased.
Is Plan 9 free software?
Re: 249. OK, maybe that ouldn't work! Re: #250. What's your definition of "Free software"?
This response has been erased.
Re: #252. "Approved by the OSI" does not mean that it is approved by Richard Stallman and the GNU/Free Software Foundation people. The OSI-approved software stack *includes* (all?) software approved by the FSF, but the reverse is not necessarily the case.
This response has been erased.
And I quote: "...There was a shakey start with Stallman and the OSI people..."
r#253: thankfully RMS hasn't got the right of veto for software worldwide.
I think I should network my next home with Ethernet (probably a combination of 10baseT, 100baseTX and perhaps 1000baseT over cat-5e and RS-485 (over Cat-3?)
)
This response has been erased.
Re: #259. I see. For one, your original statement implied, or at least I took it as implying, that RMS and the OSI were "intimately connected" in the way that RMS and the FSF are. I didn't realize that the OSF had merely "taken his side". For another, RMS/FSF advocate free software, not merely "Open Source", which the OSF is "responsible" and which looser definition merely *includes*, but is not restricted to, free software. Re: #256. Why should Stallman, or anyone, give anyone the right to use, modify, and distribute software they've distributed *with source*, without requiring them to either (a) give credit to the original authors, (b) distribute either the original, or their modified, source under the same conditions as the source they got in the first place, (c) pay up, or (d) some combination of the preceding? Might as well work one's rear end off to buy a High Definition, Widescreen, Digital Television, then give it to the nearest beggar, complete with generator. The only people who really want to have the right not to distribute source are those who are interested in getting something for nothing and charging for the privilege.
Charging others for the privilege, that is.
This response has been erased.
The Linksys wireless card works in Windows (I think, we have no signal to test it on but the driver CD installed drivers and found the card). A neighbor lent us a Netgear card to try with linux, but it needs the same linux module. I got the source code at Driverguide (Realtek's links are broken) but can't compile it - I get lots of warnings and then an error. I downloaded the Win98 driver for it (about 100K) and unzipped to get a .sys and a .inf file. Obviously this is not the self-installing type of driver. How do we feed it properly to Win98? I want to test it before returning it to the neighbor so he will know if it works. (He sleeps until late afternoon). We also found a Yahoo camera setup exe that installed itself somewhere or other but we have no idea where. Jim fixed the camera somehow. .1 MP. Serial cable, not working with our DOS Photopc download software.
Is that a Webcam? What make & model? I recently got one that works with NetBSD (probably Linux too). Mine is a Logitech Quickcan Chat. Once I have DSL, I will try video- conferencing with it.
Tiger Direct Yahoo Digital Camera. Blue and yellow, 320x200, stores 20 low res photos. We installed the software (ran the .exe file) and I have no idea where it was put. An online review said to reboot to use it so we plugged in the camera and 10 min later got back into Win98 and still had no idea how to download a photo. 1.1MB .exe file, no instructions for use. We took the laptop computer with wireless card to the library. A librarian helped us fill in the same long number on two lines and we still have no connection. Jim plugged in his USB memory stick to a computer there and it does not work. The library said they will fix that eventually. There is a floppy drive but we can only get small files onto it and the whole point was to download things like kernel source. Win98 would not work with the USB stick so we used a 1-floppy linux to transfer 2.8MB of file for the other wireless card from my linux download. Win98 says it cannot find some files it needs. We seem to have Win98FE. The first card is said to have worked on a friend's computer, I wonder how. I am going to get out some paper books and go home now.
In case this helps, I found a few random pages on the Web that seem to suggest that uses the STM STV680 chipset. I don't know whether Linux drivers are available, but if the camera supports a removeable flash card (like my cheap digital still camera, which uses Smartmedia cards), you may be able to mount those cards in a suitable reader and read that way the pictures you take.
The card has about 100Kbytes of built-in RAM, not a flash card. The only mention I found for it for linux was that nobody had any idea whether it worked and to let them know if it did. My expensive Olympus digital camera uses Smartmedia cards (for which I have a reader that works in linux but not DOS) and it also comes with a serial download cable that works in linux or DOS (40K, fits onto a book disk). Can you find linux software for the camer? It apparently takes nighttime photos via infrared flash and Jim wants to try it for fun. A grexer gave it to us. It is reviewed under 'toys, other'.
My wife recently bought an Olympus digital camera. I suspect (althought I have yet to confirm this) that it supports the umass standard and should work directly with systems like NetBSD and Linux. I'll look for open-source drivers for your Yahoo Digital Camera.
The Olympus camera I bought 4 years ago worked as a USB mass storage device, as does the one I bought earlier this year. I'm sure yours will as well.
Nice job Olympus! ;-)
Mine is never going to work as a USB mass storage device because it only comes with a serial cable. The card reader is mass-storage. I found STV0680.c linux software but it seems to be for USB. I also found two other Win98 drivers to try next with the Yahoo camera. The camera is said to also need Video4Linux (maybe to act as a webcam? Maybe to take single photos while acting as a webcam?). Someone using it with Windows said just to plug it in and reboot to download photos, which is all we are after. Lots of other cheap cameras (spycam, pen camera) use this chip.
I don't know if this helps...
http://gkall.hobby.nl/stv680-aiptek.html
...or if it supports the RS-232 cable option.
Have you tried sane or gphoto?
I have SANE set up for a scanner. I deleted the qcam parts, which I think are for webcam. I read about gphoto - it is about a 5MB download with dozens of dependencies, and most things won't compile on my system. Today we tried three Win98 drivers and they all installed but there are no instructions about what to do next. This camera has a serial cable. Jim just wants to play with it a bit and take infrared flash shots and I am not going to knock myself out trying to compile a huge program, one little bit of which downloads images from this toy camera. How does one use a camera that is not USB in Windows? It installed a couple dozen files, I think. The third of these Win98 packages is 1.1MB. It put files stv* into c:\windows\system : cfg, dll, sys, drv. Ten files. Maybe the batteries ran down? It has stopped beeping when we reboot.
It's some time since I saw a digital camera with a serial interface. That was an old Apple QuickTake (I forget which model, but perhaps all of them had serial ports). If the supplied software doesn't work with your camera, I don't know what to suggest, since I doubt there's a serial equivalent of umass.
It probably does work, we just don't have any instructions how to use it. Our other two serial cameras work with 40K of Photopc software in DOS or linux, for downloads, or to list what is on there, remove it, rename it, etc. I don't know what the 1.1MB of Windows software is supposed to do, or how. umass - usb-storage? I will look into qcam (SANE).
I am about to try compiling a PCMCIA kernel to use with the 133MHz laptop and the wireless card. Can someone give a simple summary of how to go about this? I have kernel source code in /usr/src/linux-2.4.31 (linked to /lib/modules/2.4.31/build) and I think I put the pcmcia-cs package there and unpack it and run a make config on that package as well as for the kernel.
Re resp:222: Good luck finding a USB wireless adapter that works with MacOS. I never did. I found one D-Link model that was supposed to, but the drivers were terrible and made MacOS unstable. Re resp:248: Actually, I think a problem with X11 is that there *are* so many options. Instead of having one or two window managers that are really good, and one or two sets of widgets and interface standards to support, there are dozens of half-baked ones. The network-oriented operation of X also made it slow, which has since inspired three or four direct rendering methods, all of which are (of course) incompatible with each other.
Better dozens of half-baked ones to choose from than one half-baked one you're forced to use.
Jim mentioned to people that we were trying to get PCMCIA and modems working so someone in his Dawn Ducks group gave him two external 56K (probably v92) and a router with an Airwire 330TX Maxgate. Maxgate is made by Umax and I could not find any drivers for it there. I could not find Airwire 330TX on the web. I found Addtron AEF-330TX which uses the same chip as Accton EN1217 according to BSD, and the Macronix 98713 chip, which is supported by tulip but may need something special done during compilation. I will try it anyway, precompiled module from Slackware. This card plugs into a PCMCIA slot in a box that also has a printer port and two ethernet ports labelled PC and hub and one wider WAN? port. What gets plugged into each of these? Do we plug something from the ISP (if we have DSL) into one port and a hub into the other into which we can plug several computers (if we don't want to use wireless)? I presume we can take this same wireless card and put it into a laptop computer to take to the library. What is the WAN used for and how?
Re #277: I was really hoping to use NetBSD, but my iBook's firmware wouldn't boot from an ffs partition. I tried OpenDarwin, but it was dismal. Perhaps I'll try putting the NetBSD kernel on a small Darwin partition and making the rest of the disk ffs. Failing all that, I'll need to find MacOS X Panther on CD. Re #279: What is the make and model of the mystery box?
MaxGate UGate-3300 Wireless Sharing Router with Print Server.
UMax has links to linux drivers for its routers, but they are broken. I tried to write them and they returned my mail. THey use sorbs blacklist.
Re #277: http://www.macwireless.com/html/products/11g_11b_cards/11bUSB.php
Re #281: http://www.homenethelp.com/web/review/ugate-3300.asp
Re resp:283: Wow! That's steep! I think the D-Link model (which works fine with Linux, but not with MacOS) cost $60.
When compiling a PCMCIA kernel, if I am going to use precompiled modules do I answered N or M to CONFIG_PCMCIA? I tried both ways. If I don't have APM and PNP and I get messages about them being unresolved symbols while using precompiled modules, do I need to answer Y to them or compile my own modules?
I think you need CONFIG_PCMCIA to provide the framework the other PCMCIA modules work with. I'm not totally sure, though. I don't compile many kernels from scratch anymore.
I had to answer N in order to compile directly within the downloaded pcmcia package instead of using the precompiled modules. It works now except Cardbus has a bus and does not work. The precompiled modules for some reason did not work with the precompiled kernel so I had to compile kernel and modules in two steps. Answering Y would have compiled drivers into the kernel, M would have NOT compiled any drivers, N lets you compile them yourself afterwards. Very confusing, and now I need to learn to use /sbin/hotplug and maybe some other scripts in order to use regular PCI modules with Cardbus cards.
HACKED BY GNAA LOL JEWS DID WTC LOL
My networked home now has an 802.11g LAN in addition to a small 10baseT LAN in the study. The wired LAN connects via the wireless LAN and then DSL to the Internet. AT&T DSL registration requires access to MS Windows.
You have several choices: