Unexpected Guest

Whilst doing my best to shake off my nasty cold, an unexpected guest flew past me in the garden.

Apparently that is a Holly Blue, also known as Celastrina argiolus. Sadly that is not a scaled image, but is just cropped. I think I need a macro lens...

15:30 Thursday, 26 May 2005 [#] [life] (0 comments)

WiFi Madness

I've finally got my new D-Link DWL-G650+ wifi card working on my laptop. I have revision B.1 of this card, which makes a big difference, the earlier revisions use a different chip. This card has an ACX111 chip inside, which is somewhat supported by Linux, but its not trivial.

Hoary comes with the acx_pci module builtin, and a collection of firmware. However, the module will try and load TIACX111.BIN to the card, which is wrong. It will successfully load, but the card won't work. The trick on Hoary is to steal FwRad16.bin from the driver CD and put it in /lib/hotplug/firmware, and then delete TIACX111.BIN from the same location. Only then will the right firmware be uploaded.

Sid is more fun, the module has to be built yourself (there is a package which makes this very easy using module-assistant), but don't do what the guides suggest and install acx111-firmware. Take FwRad16.bin and move it to /lib/firmware/TIACX111.BIN. Unlike the earlier versions the module in Sid will not fall back onto other firmware images.

Now that it is working, I've just got wait for the performance to increase: in a side-by-side test my cheapo Actiontec Orinoco PCMCIA card is transferring files 100Kb/s faster.

NP: Wrath Of The Math, Jeru The Damaja

12:00 Thursday, 26 May 2005 [#] [computers] (3 comments)