Grex Do-it-yourself Conference

Item 43: the near future of networked homes?

Entered by jep on Thu Jan 19 04:48:59 2006:

28 new of 290 responses total.


#263 of 290 by keesan on Mon Mar 13 18:23:01 2006:

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.


#264 of 290 by ball on Mon Mar 13 18:52:44 2006:

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.


#265 of 290 by keesan on Tue Mar 14 01:06:12 2006:

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.


#266 of 290 by ball on Tue Mar 14 01:41:54 2006:

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.


#267 of 290 by keesan on Tue Mar 14 02:51:31 2006:

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'. 


#268 of 290 by ball on Tue Mar 14 05:06:02 2006:

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.


#269 of 290 by mcnally on Tue Mar 14 07:20:41 2006:

 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.  


#270 of 290 by ball on Tue Mar 14 08:58:56 2006:

Nice job Olympus! ;-)


#271 of 290 by keesan on Tue Mar 14 14:52:58 2006:

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.


#272 of 290 by ball on Tue Mar 14 15:12:34 2006:

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?


#273 of 290 by keesan on Tue Mar 14 22:08:12 2006:

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.


#274 of 290 by ball on Wed Mar 15 01:50:03 2006:

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.


#275 of 290 by keesan on Wed Mar 15 02:00:50 2006:

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).


#276 of 290 by keesan on Wed Mar 15 03:56:11 2006:

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.


#277 of 290 by gull on Fri Mar 17 08:09:10 2006:

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. 


#278 of 290 by twenex on Fri Mar 17 09:37:48 2006:

Better dozens of half-baked ones to choose from than one half-baked one you're
forced to use.


#279 of 290 by keesan on Fri Mar 17 15:57:39 2006:

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?


#280 of 290 by ball on Fri Mar 17 16:09:55 2006:

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?


#281 of 290 by keesan on Fri Mar 17 16:17:24 2006:

MaxGate UGate-3300 Wireless Sharing Router with Print Server.


#282 of 290 by keesan on Fri Mar 17 16:47:41 2006:

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.


#283 of 290 by rcurl on Fri Mar 17 20:54:04 2006:

Re #277: http://www.macwireless.com/html/products/11g_11b_cards/11bUSB.php


#284 of 290 by ball on Fri Mar 17 21:20:10 2006:

Re #281: http://www.homenethelp.com/web/review/ugate-3300.asp


#285 of 290 by gull on Sat Mar 18 00:54:53 2006:

Re resp:283: Wow! That's steep! I think the D-Link model (which works fine
with Linux, but not with MacOS) cost $60.


#286 of 290 by keesan on Sat Mar 18 01:07:51 2006:

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?


#287 of 290 by gull on Mon Mar 20 02:38:10 2006:

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.


#288 of 290 by keesan on Mon Mar 20 16:05:22 2006:

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.


#289 of 290 by wilt on Tue May 16 23:52:02 2006:

HACKED BY GNAA LOL JEWS DID WTC LOL


#290 of 290 by ball on Wed Oct 4 01:49:08 2006:

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.


There are no more items selected.

You have several choices: