D-Link DIR-655 Firmware 1.33b01NA

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.

Nginx and HTML5 Video in Firefox

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.

My Corsair H50 CPU Cooler Experience

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 (tr3x3g1333c9)
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.

Continue reading My Corsair H50 CPU Cooler Experience

D-Link DIR-655 1.32NA Build 09 BETA

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.

Use VMWare to play your old Windows XP games

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

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

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.

D-Link SharePort Update

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.

D-Link DIR-655 1.32NA Firmware Final

Update 16th January 2010: 1.33b01NA has been released.

Update: D-Link has released a new beta firmware for the DIR-655 here, it ONLY fixes *a* SharePort issue.

This is old news but I thought it would be best to point out that the final firmware version of 1.32 is out, here is the change log:

Firmware: 1.32NA
Date: 07/20/09

1. Fix when disable DHCP server and enable DHCP server, LAN PC cannot get IP.
2. Fix using wireless client to configure Access Control rules, cause DUT reboot.
3. Fix UPnP bug.
4. Disable CAPTCHA by default
5. Fixed QRS issue, can’t set up wireless setting.
6. Fixed Router DHCP IP range issue.
7. Fixed WPS UI Show Error warning message.
8. Fix potential security leak with CAPTCHA.
9. Fix USB LED issue about Shareport.
10.Fix Shareport HP932C with Wins 7 issue
11. Fix if set more than 8 Trigger or Firewall port in Application Rules. It will show Warning message.
12. Fix bug: When QRS set wan type of rt to DHCP, the rt will not set Primary and second DNS.

Note: This firmware does not allow downgrading to pre-1.3x.

So far it appears that the DNS Relay lockup bug has not been fixed, SharePort is still acting up for users and in some cases even worse, some people report smoother file transfers however.

Download here:
D-Link DIR-655 Firmware 1.32NA

Using Symbolic Links in Vista/Windows 7 for Google Chrome User Data

Recently I have been able to shed Firefox completely and start using Google Chrome, mainly due to it’s simple and speedy nature, but you can read all about that in my previous quick review of it when it first came out here.

I have recently purchased an OCZ Vertex SSD, the problem with Solid State Drives at the moment is their limited writes and while the MTBF is high enough to not expect to reach the limit before it becomes obselete it is still enough to make you self conscious about what gets to write to the drive.

Web browsers are arguably the most common abusers of file reads/writes on hard drives, the cache is constantly being written and overwritten as you browse and SSD users often look for a way to keep a browser’s cache off their SSD. With Firefox it is as easy as using Firefox Portable, it’s also quite handy to use if you move from computer to computer, but Google Chrome doesn’t have this feature yet, though a Chromium based browser SRWare Iron has a portable version.

There is a simple solution for keeping Chrome’s cache and other user data on another drive and that is the symbolic linking feature found in Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Move the User Data folder from the C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome directory and place it on the other drive in whatever folder you want to call it, I simply put mine in D:\Chrome Profile

The next step is open up Command Prompt as an Administrator (right click, then click “Run as Administrator”) then type in the following command

mklink /J “where you want the symlink and what you want to call it” “where the real folder is”

For Example:


mklink /J "C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data" "D:\Chrome Profile\User Data"

In this case the symlink name must be called User Data.

The /J command tells it to make a Directory Junction, in other words make windows applications believe that the folder is in the same spot as the symlink, you will notice that if you head to the chrome AppData folder on the SSD that there will be a folder with a shortcut icon in it called User Data, if you double click on it all your user data files with be inside and unlike opening up a normal shortcut, or soft symlink, the files in the folder will all appear to be on the SSD in the correct folder.

If you open up Google Chrome it will open as if nothing happened.

Update 22nd August 2009: I have done the same thing with Firefox’s ‘Mozilla’ profile directory, the only problem is if you load Thunderbird Portable it will for some reason (and somehow) delete your ‘Mozilla’ junction for Firefox, the solution for now is to set up Thunderbird with the ‘Thunderbird’ folder in the same fashion and not use Thunderbird Portable for this function.