![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crschmidtPurchases:
* WRT54G -- which will be going back.
* 2 4-port Audio-video switches: one for the stereo, upstairs, and one for the video games, downstairs.
* 2 20 foot Audio-only cables and a set of female-to-female connectors
* Replacement DVI->S-Video/RCA cable for the mac mini
* Replacement Mini-DVI to VGA cable -- which turned out to be the wrong one somehow? This'll be going back too. The mini-dvi plug does not match the one on my powerbook at all.
* 2 12 foot Video+Audio cables with 2 female-to-female connectors.
* 1 6 foot Gold Plated Component video cable (this was my real splurge)
Component video installation went seamlessly -- although I did break the DVD player slightly, but in the process learned that it's ridiculously easy to fix. That $20 charge for fixing it whenever julie broke it was definitely overpriced: It's a three-screw job to take the cover off and the DVDs are right there. (I may use it as a lesson for the kids on how these things work: looking at a spinning DVD might be cool.) Not only that, but the video quality is significantly better than with the composite video cable, something I never really expected to happen - it was mostly just a goal I've had since I first got a DVD player to be able to hook up component and see if there was a difference. (And it was confirmed by everyone who saw it that the colors were brighter, so it's not just a biased viewpoint because I spent $30 on it.)
Set up cables for the mac mini. No problem -- now hooked up to video 1 on the TV so we can watch movies from zeus without much effort, which is great.
Set up cables to desk and next to bed, plugged in turntable, got that all set up so we can just hit a button to choose. Need to move speakers around stuff into better positions.
Then I spent a lot of hours doing something really useless. The WRT54G is known as being a Linux-powered router, one that's easy to hack with an alternate firmware.
Yeah, right.
That used to be the case with the last one I bought, so I figured another one would work well. Little did I know that recently, the WRT54G firmware hsa been built to prevent the uploading of new versions to the router unless they're Linksys firmware, so you can no longer extend the capabilities of your router (for example, to support connecting to another Wireless Router for internet as a client, rather than acting as an AP.) After dicking with it and following every trick on the net to try and get it to work (and failing), I tried just installing a firmware on the old router, and succeeded.
However, once I did this, and brought the router downstairs (where it was to act as a wireless bridge), it still wasn't working. Connections failing, only talking to other machines when there was already an incoming connection, etc. I'm sure that some work could be done on it, but after spending 4 hours on it tonight, I'm done. I'm taking it back tomorrow, getting something small and designed to just connect to a wireless AP and be done. I'll also pick up a higher gain wireless antenna, the one thing I meant to get today but failed. I'll also pick up some connectors to go from the 4-way splits to the devices they're connecting to, which I also didn't think about. Overall cost should be about the same -- I'm really frustrated with Linksys for this crap though. I expected better of them.
Jess and I had dinner at California Pizza Kitchen: I had the Jambalaya, which was absolutely incredible. I also had my first ever drink-in-a-restaurant: Several times before I've thought about it, but never had my license or was taking public transportation, so it's simply never happened.
* WRT54G -- which will be going back.
* 2 4-port Audio-video switches: one for the stereo, upstairs, and one for the video games, downstairs.
* 2 20 foot Audio-only cables and a set of female-to-female connectors
* Replacement DVI->S-Video/RCA cable for the mac mini
* Replacement Mini-DVI to VGA cable -- which turned out to be the wrong one somehow? This'll be going back too. The mini-dvi plug does not match the one on my powerbook at all.
* 2 12 foot Video+Audio cables with 2 female-to-female connectors.
* 1 6 foot Gold Plated Component video cable (this was my real splurge)
Component video installation went seamlessly -- although I did break the DVD player slightly, but in the process learned that it's ridiculously easy to fix. That $20 charge for fixing it whenever julie broke it was definitely overpriced: It's a three-screw job to take the cover off and the DVDs are right there. (I may use it as a lesson for the kids on how these things work: looking at a spinning DVD might be cool.) Not only that, but the video quality is significantly better than with the composite video cable, something I never really expected to happen - it was mostly just a goal I've had since I first got a DVD player to be able to hook up component and see if there was a difference. (And it was confirmed by everyone who saw it that the colors were brighter, so it's not just a biased viewpoint because I spent $30 on it.)
Set up cables for the mac mini. No problem -- now hooked up to video 1 on the TV so we can watch movies from zeus without much effort, which is great.
Set up cables to desk and next to bed, plugged in turntable, got that all set up so we can just hit a button to choose. Need to move speakers around stuff into better positions.
Then I spent a lot of hours doing something really useless. The WRT54G is known as being a Linux-powered router, one that's easy to hack with an alternate firmware.
Yeah, right.
That used to be the case with the last one I bought, so I figured another one would work well. Little did I know that recently, the WRT54G firmware hsa been built to prevent the uploading of new versions to the router unless they're Linksys firmware, so you can no longer extend the capabilities of your router (for example, to support connecting to another Wireless Router for internet as a client, rather than acting as an AP.) After dicking with it and following every trick on the net to try and get it to work (and failing), I tried just installing a firmware on the old router, and succeeded.
However, once I did this, and brought the router downstairs (where it was to act as a wireless bridge), it still wasn't working. Connections failing, only talking to other machines when there was already an incoming connection, etc. I'm sure that some work could be done on it, but after spending 4 hours on it tonight, I'm done. I'm taking it back tomorrow, getting something small and designed to just connect to a wireless AP and be done. I'll also pick up a higher gain wireless antenna, the one thing I meant to get today but failed. I'll also pick up some connectors to go from the 4-way splits to the devices they're connecting to, which I also didn't think about. Overall cost should be about the same -- I'm really frustrated with Linksys for this crap though. I expected better of them.
Jess and I had dinner at California Pizza Kitchen: I had the Jambalaya, which was absolutely incredible. I also had my first ever drink-in-a-restaurant: Several times before I've thought about it, but never had my license or was taking public transportation, so it's simply never happened.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-10-16 07:59 am (UTC)It's interesting reading through the current hardware compatibility list for OpenWRT (http://openwrt.org/TableOfHardware) to see just how many of these consumer products are running Linux internally, with basically the same hardware in them. I've not really followed the others much, so I'm not sure if any of the other manufacturers are more open-source friendly. But I'm not sure I'd buy any of them for "supporting open source", since my impression is that they're just using Linux because it was there and the price was right. (There are other hardware vendors which are more keen on open source in other areas though.)
As for the cables, my impression is that (again for short runs) the quality of cable makes relatively little difference, but keeping the signals separate (component) definitely helps a lot. In my case I'm actually using an A-V cable (intended for composite + left/right audio) for my component cable -- it's only a couple of feet long, and it works fine. In theory component video should be a little better quality than S-Video (since the cables are more physically separate), but as I said the difference is much less than the gap to composite. And you're right component video is generally easier to get hold of/plug in.
Ewen