PostDowngrade D-Link DIR-655 1.3x Firmware

January 31, 2010 – 2:17 pm
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I have been debating whether or not I should put this up, however after much testing I have concluded that it is safe, it works and many other people have used this method, it goes without saying that this is still quite dangerous to do as nobody knows why D-Link doesn’t allow the downgrade to take place and they may believe it can cause bricked routers.

There is firmware floating around that allows a D-Link DIR-655 to downgrade to pre-1.3x firmware (and also to other countries’ firmware), here are the results of my testing:

First I factory reset my router, it was running the 1.33NA b01 firmware, then I firmware upgraded it to the DIR655A4_FW131RUB10 firmware file that I will make available at the end, this is a modified version of an official Russian firmware, (apparently 2 bytes is all that has been changed).

D-link DIR-655 Downgrade 1

The first step, upgrade to the RU firmware

Once this was complete I was running the modified firmware, as you can see it is still in English.

D-link DIR-655 Downgrade 2

Here I am running the modified firmware

Then I was free to upgrade/downgrade to any firmware I wished, so I decided to try the official Australian Firmware 1.21 and this worked perfectly.

D-link DIR-655 Downgrade 3

Back on the Australian firmware

Here is the chklst.txt info on the firmware to prove it downgraded successfully.

D-link DIR-655 Downgrade 4

chklst.txt of AU firmware

You can download the modified firmware below:
Modified RU DIR-655 firmware (1.49 MB) 31-01-2010

Written by Ben

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PostD-Link DIR-655 1.33NA Firmware final released

January 31, 2010 – 1:24 pm
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D-Link have been quick to release new versions of the 1.33NA firmware recently, now they have released the final 1.33NA version.

In my experience it is one of the better versions of the 1.3x firmware family, here is the changelog:

  • Fixed: Correct HNAP issue.
  • Fixed: DNS relay issue ( WAN Slowdown )
  • Added: Advanced DNS descriptions

Remember this cannot be downgraded by official means to anything pre-1.3x or other international firmwares, however you can always try the unofficial way.

You can download it here:
D-Link DIR-655 Firmware 1.33NA (1.47 MB) 31-01-2010

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PostD-Link DIR-655 Firmware 1.33b01NA

January 16, 2010 – 7:52 pm
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Update 31-01-2010: There is a new firmware version 1.33NA final that can be found here.

D-Link has released a new firmware for the DIR-655, version 1.33b01NA.

It’s not known yet what has been changed though it appears to be working quite well for people.

You can get it here.

Remember that this is the North American firmware so while it is compatible with other countries’ hardware it cannot be downgraded to pre 1.3x NA firmware OR to any other country’s firmware, so once you go NA, you can’t go back.

Please visit the D-Link forums post about it here before you install the firmware as this doesn’t have support from the usual places. Feedback can be left in this forum post.

Also let us know how it goes in the comments below.

Written by Ben

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PostNginx and HTML5 Video in Firefox

January 13, 2010 – 12:54 pm
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Recently I moved my site to a new VPS run by me, the whole process went smoothly and after removing a few server specific .htaccess commands the site was up and running again.

I noticed however that the HTML5 video files that I have been using on a trial basis had stopped working with a big X in the middle of the video frame, but only in Firefox.

This indicates many possible problems with the video, some of which I could immediately dismiss as the file worked fine and other browsers such as Chrome had no issues playing it.

I remembered that it’s important to make sure the mime types are set correctly in apache, easily done with a modification of the .htaccess file in the site’s root directory, however I already had them in place, after trying different things I finally realised that nginx was serving the files directly so I did the following steps:

Open up the Nginx mime type configuration file, eg: /etc/nginx/mime.types
Paste these lines after the last video mime type, in my case it was avi:

    video/ogg                             ogm;
    video/ogg                             ogv;
    video/ogg                             ogg;

Restart nginx, it should then serve ogg video correctly to Firefox users.

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PostMy Corsair H50 CPU Cooler Experience

December 30, 2009 – 2:22 pm
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This is my main computer, I built it this time last year:

Case: Cooler Master Cosmos S
Power Supply: Antec NeoPower 650
Motherboard: Asus P6T Deluxe
CPU: Intel Core i7 920 (C0 Stepping)
RAM: 3GB Corsair DDR3 1333MHz (tr3×3g1333c9)
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 8800GTX, temporarily only one, normally x2 in SLi, explanation below
Hard Drives: 1x 60GB OCZ Vertex (running firmware 1.40 (TRIM)), 1x 500GB Seagate 702.11 (running fixed firmware)
Other Drives: ASUS 20x SATA DVD Burner

Over past few months the fan on my Intel Core i7 stock CPU cooler started failing, the fan initially halved in fan speed, then slowly lost ~50rpm per week while my CPU temp crept up, fan control was off and there was nothing blocking the fan from physically moving, so I decided to replace it.

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PostD-Link DIR-655 1.32NA Build 09 BETA

November 12, 2009 – 4:22 pm
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Update 16th January 2010: 1.33b01NA has been released.

D-link have released an unsupported beta version of the DIR-655’s firmware, this supposedly fixes only the DNS Relay bug.

You can get it here, they seem to be pretty insistent that the firmware shouldn’t be used if you’re worried about your warranty etc so I will just leave it at that link, I’ll be testing this seeing as my router is stuck as a glorified Wireless AP and Gigabit switch due to it’s bad behaviour so it can’t really get much worse.

Written by Ben

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PostUse VMWare to play your old Windows XP games

October 28, 2009 – 4:29 pm
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Upgrading Windows can be tricky, most applications and current games are usually updated when a new OS is out in order to keep the compatibility, however some of them get left behind by their developers and require workarounds and all sorts of community-based fixes.

Fortunately for us end-users there are more options than ever before to let us use this software, Windows 7 Professional/Ultimate/Enterprise includes Windows XP Mode and Windows Virtual PC in order to run applications just as they would in Windows XP and DOSBox allows even 64-bit users the chance to use 16-bit applications and games that were made over 15 years ago.

Continue reading “Use VMWare to play your old Windows XP games” »

Written by Ben

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PostD-Link DIR-655 1.32 Build 04 Beta 01 SharePort fix

October 3, 2009 – 6:13 pm
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Update 16th January 2010: 1.33b01NA has been released.

D-link have released a new beta firmware for the DIR-655 in the hopes that it will fix an undisclosed SharePort issue.

Changelog:

  • This code can be used with all hardware revisions of the DIR-655
  • This code only addresses the shareport issue
  • The attached Shareport utility will only work with this version firmware

I don’t know what SharePort issue they are referring to and I have not tested this myself.

Once again this firmware WILL NOT DOWNGRADE to pre 1.3x firmwares so if you are on a pre 1.3x firmware then it is suggested that you stay put because chances are you will only have more issues and you can’t go back.

This firmware is beta, it is a test release, it may break/brick your router for no reason.

As the changelog suggests there is a new SharePort utility included that will supposedly only work with this version, I don’t know if SX Virtual Link works with this firmware, but for the record it has a version number of 5.6.2 making it newer than SX Virtual Link.

Download Link:

D-Link DIR-655 Firmware 1.32 Build 04 Beta 1 with new SharePort

Update 27th of October 2009: I have decided to test this firmware out as some users have reported that there are some small wireless improvements, I will leave any findings in the comments below. I will also try a SharePort stability test as the longest I have been able to keep a single SharePort connection alive has been about half an hour.

Written by Ben

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PostD-Link SharePort Update

August 20, 2009 – 9:07 pm
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Update: D-Link has released a new firmware for the DIR-655 here, it contains a version of SharePort that is newer than SX Virtual Link.

I haven’t been following D-Link’s SharePort fiasco since the first few months of my previous blog posting about it here. This is due to the fact that as many users have experienced since the original release it appears to have gained more and more bugs in each new version and we only occasionally see them being fixed.

A forum post in the official D-Link forums about the Apple OSX users of the software pointed me to the fact that the drivers and software used to connect to the router appears to have been made by a company called Silex Technology.

I searched around and found SX-Virtual Link, the original name of the D-Link SharePort Utility, upon downloading and installing the latest version 3.2.3 I found that the application was the same as the SharePort Utility except for the branding and the version. D-Link’s latest SharePort Utility has the date 2009/01/06 and theirs is 2009/02/02, there is also a major version difference, the specific version number for the utility/drivers with SharePort is version 4.9.5 and SX-Virtual Link is up to version 5.3.0.

Upon using the utility I had no problems at all connecting to my D-Link DIR-655’s device, I used a wireless mouse to test the functionality and it worked flawlessly for some time, so I am encouraging users who currently have issues with SharePort to uninstall it and install SX-Virtual Link and see if it fixes any of the issues you are currently having with your devices.

For OSX users I have not been able to test out the OSX version and I am unaware of any changes you might need to make to get it working but I will provide a link below for those users to test if they so wish.

You can get the latest version of SX-Virtual Link just below:

These are updated versions (3.4.0) 31/12/2009

SX Virtual Link 3.4.0 Windows
SX Virtual Link 3.3.0 Mac OSX

Please comment below with your experiences.

Written by Ben

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PostWhispy Blue Theme Release

August 16, 2009 – 3:14 pm
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I’ve just released the latest theme for WordPress, “Whispy Blue”, you can find out more information and download it here.

Whispy Blue

Whispy Blue

Leave a comment below if you experience any issues with using the theme.

Version 1.05 has been released, get it here.

Written by Ben

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