A rather sophisticated approach to extending wireless networks

Macintouch: Wireless Networking (Part 30)

A very clever approach to extending wireless coverage in the absence of any standard for the extension (I think WDS may be a standard, but it is not well supported):

Wireless Range Extender For Travelers

Gary Ralston

I travel frequently, and often need to extend a wireless signal by 50 - 75 feet. Commonly, I can pick up a signal by a window from the next building, but lose the signal deeper inside the structure, where I wish to work. Wireless Range Extenders are the black sheep of wireless. The various WI-FI standards do not specify how a wireless signal should be captured and repeated, so each manufacturer rolls their own, resulting in incompatibility between brands.

Yesterday, I found a deal on D-Link's TINY and versatile DWL-G730AP Wireless Pocket Router/AP™. As of August 10, 2005 Office Depot in Chicago was selling them at $30 EACH after rebates.

This little device is smaller than a PCMCIA card - about the size of two graham crackers, stacked - and SMART! An external switch changes the mode between client, access point OR router. It draws power from A/C OR USB, and is fully configurable using D-Link's standard web interface. To boot, it supports WPA PSK.

I bought two, switched one into client mode and the other in router mode, taught the client which SSID and channel I wanted to bag,plugged them together, and for $60 USD, had a universal range extender.

To change the default settings, Mac users DO need to know how to create a manual IP on either Ethernet (to customize client or AP mode) or Airport (to tinker with the router). In the Network System Preference, create a location for configuring my various d-link contraptions. Set the IP to 192.168.0.100, subnet mask 255.255.255.0 and gateway 192.168.0.30. Use a browser to connect to 192.168.0.30. The username is Admin, and the default password is blank.

Two devices so the proprietary link is hidden.

Dell 2005FPW LCD Display: the poor man's cinema

TidBITS: Expanding the View with a Dell LCD Display

I wish my Samsung 17" CRT would hurry up and die. Maybe if I dropped it a few times ...

Dell, being the giant of the industry, is able to command great prices on the parts it buys, which is one reason the company can offer complete computer systems for relatively little cost. Consequently, Dell frequently puts together deals to move its inventory. In this case, I found the 20.1-inch 2005FPW LCD for around $550. Considering that Apple's original 22-inch Cinema Display cost $4,000, and its current 20-inch model costs $800, the Dell display was a great deal...

...The 2005FPW has a 20.1-inch viewable screen size, supporting a maximum resolution of 1680 by 1050 pixels (1,764,000 pixels). According to the technical specifications, it sports a contrast ratio of 600:1, an image brightness of 300 cd/m2 (candela per square meter, a measure of luminosity), and a viewing angle of approximately 88 degrees vertically and horizontally. In real-world terms, that means the screen is bright, beautiful, and sharp.

That's not all, though. The 2005FPW includes four input types: VGA, DVI-D, S-video, and composite. At first I thought that was marketing jargon that indicated you could simply attach just about any device with included adapters, but no, the monitor includes four separate ports. That enables you to connect four devices and switch between them. My PowerBook G4 connects via the DVI-D port, and for fun I hooked up my old Dell laptop via VGA. A button on the front of the monitor's frame switches among the different inputs.

The iMac does not support an external display other than for (gag) mirroring. (Apple doesn't support multi-monitor desktops on its 'low end' machines. Sad indeed. Once upon a time even a Mac SE supported multi-display desktops.)

There's supposed to be a way to support an external display via a USB device, but I can't believe it would work well (bandwidth). If I could share a 20" Dell between my XP and my 20" iMac, so I could have an on-demand 20" x 20" desktop ...

Update: Ahh. I'd forgotten screen spanning doctor, as mentioned here. I think the Samsung may have a nasty accident shortly before Christmas. What a shame ... I would suggest monitoring the iMac's temperature when increasing the load on the video subsystem however.

GraphicConverter 5.7: I'll take some credit for the timing of some of the new features ...

Lemke Software GmbH, Peine - History GraphicConverter

GC 5.7 is out, and I'll be an eager adopter. I can take a bit of credit for the timing of a few features (in bold, Thorsten implemented them after a request I made to the list -- the crop for photoservice idea is an old suggestion of mine but it's great):

* direct icns export added
* temporary visible grid option added
* exif to exif in xmp metadata conversion added for export as jp2 and png
* bsb import added
* psf import added
* export as favicon added
* export as byte-array header file added
* applescript command for color mode change added
* crop for photoservice supports a userdefined folder
* edit/add EXIF context menu entry added to the browser
* sort into subfolder with exif model added as function to convert&modify
* complex rename by exif data option added to batch rename
* EXIF-GPS tag support added
* support for high res windows icon files added (import)

EXIF in JP2 and PNG is not yet supported by Quicktime/iPhoto, but I'll add that request to Apple's site.

Pixel sizes on different monitors (Ray Sanders, via Macintouch)

MacInTouch: timely news and tips about the Apple Macintosh

The iBook 12" screen pixel pitch is very small, yet my aging eyes reads text readily there ...

Ray Sanders provided a table comparing pixel sizes for a variety of monitors:

Pixel Pitch
(mm) DPI 12-point equiv. Notes

0.353 72 12 traditional Mac glass CRT
0.339 74.9 11.5 another common glass CRT
0.297 85.5 10.1 I saw something at the Dell site with this pitch
0.294 86.4 10 Dell 1905FP
0.28 90.7 9.5 calculated, est. pitch of the 14.1-in iBook
0.258 98.4 8.8 current models of Apple Cinema Displays
0.254 100 8.6 center point of today's crop of flatscreens
0.24 105.8 8.2 calculated, est. pitch of the 12.1-in. iBook

Compare to printing at 300 dpi.

Free OS X battery utility

MacInTouch: timely news and tips about the Apple Macintosh

myBattery 1.0 displays battery information for recent PowerBooks and iBooks. It shows not only the current battery charge in relation to the maximum battery charge (as mAh and as a percentage) but also the current battery capacity in relation to the original battery capacity, which indicates how well the battery is aging. In addition, it shows the number of battery load cycles and the age of the Mac, and it can display an alert if the wrong charger is connected. myBattery is free (donations welcome) for Mac OS X 10.4 and is available as a Universal Binary to run on Intel-based Macs.

I'm seeing quite a few 'universal binary' notes lately.

Remote control of a Tiger desktop

macosxhints - Some Apple Remote Desktop client features

I want to be able to control by iMac Tiger machine. Turns out Tiger now includes a VNC server -- Apple Remote Desktop client. This bundled servers is slower than OSXVNC but supports fast user switching and dual monitor displays. Directions for use are here.

TightVNC and 'Chicken of the VNC' are recommended clients for the iBook. TightVNC has a Windows version as well.

Update 10/13/05: NYET. TightVNC is strictly windows. Chicken of the VNC threw a zlib error and died. VNCViewer locked up my machine -- turns out it's years old. Tiger has a built-in VNC client, but there doesn't appear to be a low cost VNC Cient for the Mac that will support my iMac display. Apple Remote Desktop is $200.00, Timbuktu Remote is also costly (you need two licenses?). I guess I have to wait for Apple to support this feature.

Using WDS to and OS X connection sharing to post this from my PC

We've moved -- across the alley. So we keep our neighbors and friends, but I've lost my broadband connection -- for at least four days. Qwest can move our phone line instantly (same number), but DSL takes time -- even though our new home had Qwest DSL until 10 days ago.

Fortunately two neighbors have wireless I can leach from momentarily. I couldn't get Jim's to work, but Peter's window is about 70 yards away -- unobstructed site line.

Peter put his Airport Extreme Base Station (AEBS) in his window and I put mine in the facing window. Then the fun began. It took some time and some false starts, but I got WDS to work. Part of the problem was I did my configuration purely wirelessly, flipping between my wireless LAN and Peter's. I think Apple's WDS configuration works much better if one is physically connected to the main (host) base station. Doing it wirelessly is like changing wheels on a moving unicycle. It did work though.

This article does provide some useful information: AirPort Extreme and Express: Using WDS to create a network from multiple base stations.

A few notes:

1. Peter was using WPA2 Personal encryption. I used to use very insecure WEP (legacy reasons) but I switched my network encryption to match his (I think this may be necessary for the merger to work). Both AEBS had been flashed to the latest release and all machines were using latest AirPort software.

2. I set my AEBS to "neutral" -- dispense IP addresses, etc.

3. I then took control of Peter's AEBS and followed the WDS directions. I added my AEBS as a client. At first I was asked for the network password, then for the base station (administrative) password. This took a few tries and wasn't at all very smooth. I think I should have been wired into Peter's AEBS to do this. The automatic configuration did work though.

4. When it was done my old network was nowhere to be seen, but now I could join Peter's network directly. (I think part of the problem happens because I was wirelessly on Peter's network, but after my AEBS joined his I had to hop to mine.)

5. I could then use my iMac at the other end of the house -- in the new office. I turned on internet connection sharing and connected the internal ethernet to my switch. My PC then got it's IP address from the iMac.

So, in conclusion, my PC is connecting to the iMac via wired ethernet, then the iMac is acting as a bridge via 802.11g to my AEBS, which is now a mobile base station communicating to Peter's AEBS which has a wired connection to Peter's DSL modem.

And to think only a few years ago I was using Telnet after hours to dial-up to remote BBSs out east ...

Update 8/14/05

Qwest is, of course, beind on my DSL services so I'm still using this kludgy connection. I've learned a few things about Tiger's Internet Connection sharing:

1. The PC gets a 192.168.2.2 address. Oddly enough the iMac's ethernet IP address is quite odd, neither a 10.x or 192.x address but rather 169.x. So the client PC and host Mac are on very different 'networks'. The Mac can't see any shares on the PC, but the PC can see Mac shares. (If I turn off connection sharing and set my PC's IP to match the ethernet IP of the iMac then the network does fine.
2. Retrospect can't find its clients because they're basically in a different network.

Update 8/15/05

I'm making a bit more progress. Now even when I enable Tiger's Internet Connection sharing my PC can be seen by my iMac (the two are connected by wired ethernet) and Retrospect/Windows can "see" the Retrospect client on the Tiger machine. Here's the trick:

1. I noticed when Internet Connection Sharing was enabled, and the PC was set up to use DHCP, it got a 192.168.2.x address (commonly used legal range for internal networks). So I set the PC to manually use 192.168.2.20 as its address and configured the DNS servers to my ISP's servers.
2. I then set the ethernet IP address on the iMac manually to be 192.168.128.200. So it was on the same network.
3. Retrospect/Windows still couldn't see the iMac client, so I turned off Retrospect Client on the iMac, then turned off the AirPort, then turned Retrospect Client on again. I was then able to find it from the PC. I then reenabled AirPort on the iMac and was again able to see Retrospect client. (I knew to try this because I've noticed before that Retrospect Client gets "stuck" on the AirPort irregardless of my OS X network port preference configuration; even when there's a physical link Retrospect ignores it. I have to disable the AirPort to get it to use the wired link. I don't know if this is an OS X or Retrospect bug, but Retrospect is, in general, the crummiest piece of non-Microsoft software I've ever used.
   

PS. Qwest is even further behind on getting my DSL configured.

Update 8/16

I've just discovered that I can't set the AirPort to WPA2 only -- that isn't an option for G3 iBooks. Probably note enough horsepower. Makes me wonder how much of a battery drain WPA is. I've noticed my iBook losing power pretty quickly. I'm going to monitor xBattery with the AirPort on and off ...