Hola!
yes, .. the blog is barely alive…!
Been busy with work and life, no haven’t updated the blog as much as I would have liked to!
All is good..!
Add comment | February 19th, 2013 at 11:33am
Non-Samsung USB Wireless Adapters on Samsung TV – How to
We recently purchased a 40″ Samsung LCD TV (Model No LA40D550) to replace our Jurassic era 29″ Flat screen CRT TV here in India.
Although this model is not a SMART TV, one cool feature is that this TV supports DLNA! Samsung calls it AllShare.
Well, what that means is, from a Windows 7 PC, one can stream movies/music to the TV. Also from the TV, one can browse & view the media thats on a DLNA server (windows 7 has it built-in). Also, now a days, other devices support DLNA (like my Mobile Phone – HTC Desire HD). So basically, I can play the video that I have on my phone on the TV. And for all this to work you need a WiFi network (works on a wired network as well, but who needs wires :D).
Now, to enable wireless DLNA on this TV you need to purchase the optional Samsung Wireless Adapter – LinkStick (WIS09ABGN), which is a total rip-off at Rs.4500 just for the adapter. Its basically a WLAN adapter, which is Samsung branded. Other 3rd party adapters are available for Rs. 1000 or less but the TV does not recognize it.
So, now for the interesting bit on how to get a Non-Samsung wireless adapter to work on this TV!!… Here are the steps that I followed…(the easiest approach that I could find)
- Did some research on the Internet & found that the Samsung USB Wireless adapter (WLAN) was basically using a Ralink chipset within it – RT2870 to be precise. So, basically, the TV has the drivers required to control or interact with that chipset. Oh, the TV internally runs on Linux if you were wondering.
- Now, I had to find a USB WLAN adapter which had the same chip. Did some further search on the internet and found that the Edimax EW-7718Unuses the exact same chipset. Did a quick search on eBay India & found one from Rs. 949 including shipping. Two days, and I had that adapter to play with!
- You can find other WLAN adapters from other brands too, but make sure that the chipset within it is the same Ralink 2870 chipset & the VID/PID can be changed via the EEPROM (more on this a bit later). Also, please keep in mind that these devices come with different hardware revisions and each revision can have a different chipset. So, you need to be a bit careful here. It won’t burn your TV down if you plug an incompatible USB WLAN adapter, but you will have a useless WLAN adapter with you :)
- I tried pluging-in this Edimax EW-7718Un adapter to the TV directly and nothing happened. The TV did not recognize it. Then plugged it to my laptop.. and sure enough it was working fine. So, the unit was good.. but the TV was not recognizing it.
- Did some search again on the net & found this wonderful site called SamyGo.Tv. Not for the faint hearted. Basically they have custom firmware and super cool hacks for Samsung TVs! How cool is that!! This page in particular was very helpful.
- Every USB device has two identifiers VID & PID, which identifies the vendor and the product. These values are in the ROM and on many of the WLAN adapters, these values can be replaced or re-programmed (i.e, they are on EEPROM). So the TV is basically expecting the WLAN adapter to have Samsung specific vendor ID and product ID. Now we know what needs to be done to get the TV to recognize the Edimax Adapter!
- So, basically, the Edimax EW-7718Un had the following values
- VID = 7392
- PID = 7718
- For the TV to recognize the Edimax WLAN adapter, I had to replace the above values to the one present on the official Samsung WLAN adapter/linkstick:
- VID = 04E8
- PID = 2018
- According to this wiki page, the recommended approach to make this change is to run some commands in linux, which re-programs the ROM. I searched for Windows equivalent tools to do the same, but could not find anything simple/easy.
- Well, it had been a while since I had taken Linux for a spin and this was motivating enough to try the latest version of Ubuntu (release 11.1). I set it up in a Virtual environment & started following the instructions on the Wiki page. I quickly learn’t that the drivers did not compile on latest version of Ubuntu.. So had to download the older version of Ubuntu 10.4 and set it up. This time, the drivers compiled perfectly fine!
- I would consider myself a beginner on linux..and I had to spend some time to figure it out. So, to help anyone else in a similar state, here is what you need to know…
- The Linux OS by default does not have the necessary drivers for this Chipset (the Ralink RT2870).
- You download the latest linux drivers from the Ralink website.
- In the linux world, you need to compile the drivers. So, to do that you need to download the latest updates and development tools (like the compiler etc) which are not installed by default when you setup Ubuntu/linux. The instructions for this are covered in the Wiki at SamyGo.tv
- Once the drivers are compiled, you load the drivers using the insmod command (again covered in the Wiki)
- Once the drivers are loaded, you can then run the command to re-program the VID & PID values in the EEPROM.
root@localhost:~# iwpriv ra0 e2p 208=04E8 ra0 e2p:0208=0x04E8 root@localhost:~# iwpriv ra0 e2p 20A=2018 ra0 e2p:020A=0x2018
- Thats it!. Then I plugged the Edimax EW-7718Un adapter to the TV & Viola!!! the TV recognized it as a Samsung adapter without a hitch!
- Then it was just a matter of selecting my WiFi network, and entering the security key (WEP/WPA/WPA2) and within seconds, the TV was on our home network, DLNA enabled!
Hope this guide is helpful! This should mostly work on the B series, C series & the D series Samsung TVs.
By the way, do check out the SamyGo.tv website & especially this wiki page for other ways to get WLAN adapters working (of other similar chipsets).
Standard Disclaimer applies: I am not responsible to any damage to your TV or the wireless adapter! :)
All the best!
28 comments | October 19th, 2011 at 02:01pm
In India for a few months…
Yes., i am back in India for a while! Landed here on 7-Sep, and will be here for a few months..!!! … Working from Infosys Mangalore office after almost 5.5 years!,
..not much has changed…except for the skyrocketing prices!
…and .. oh yes one of the fly-overs in Kottara is done & open!
| October 19th, 2011 at 11:56am
Yup. Alive.
Yup. I am alive. Kind of busy with life. I guess priorities in life change :) — and obviously, blogging is currently not at the top of that list :)………. All good…!!
| May 24th, 2011 at 06:15pm
Happy New Year – 2011
Happy New year folks !
2010 has been one crazy year! hope 2011 would be better!
3 comments | January 1st, 2011 at 11:45pm
Adding a 2nd HDD to Dell Studio XPS 1647/1645/1640 laptop
Our house was burglarized in early January, and we lost a whole bunch of portable electronics stuff. Our old fully loaded Inspiron 1420 too was a victim of this theft.
After that I was looking for a good laptop to replace it …. and finally ordered a Dell Studio XPS 1647. It took over a month and a half for Dell to ship the laptop and I finally received it last week. Its a pretty good laptop. However, Dell officially supports only one HDD on it. I wanted to use a SSD (solid state drive) as my primary drive for the OS, and then have a second HDD as secondary drive for bulk data storage. So, I bought a 60GB SSD drive and used it as the primary drive. SSD makes a HUGE difference in the performance. No more waits. The entire windows 7 installation was complete in less than 15 mins… Its a major improvement in performance.
However, the problem is.. the SSD is way to expensive for now. For e.g: 60 GB SSD costs around $170 to $200… and larger capacities cost a fortune. I am pretty sure prices would come down eventually in a year or so.. But for now, I wanted a second HDD to store bulk data – like movies, HD videos that I capture, tons of photos from my dSLR ..etc.. and 60GB won’t suffice. Offcourse, I can connect an external HDD.. but its a hassle with the laptop. So, the search began to see if I could put a second HDD into this laptop. I had heard of people who had replaced their Optical Disk Drives (CD/DVD) with a HDD Caddy and have a second HDD.
So, I did some research on the net and across this specific thread on the notebook review forums, which I visit frequently. Thanks to the author of the thread, I could confirm that this could be done. But since Dell XPS 1647 is a new model (just released), .. no one had really done this, and I believe I am one of the first few to try this out. Not a big deals as such since 1647 is almost similar to 1645/1640 series (except for the processors) and some have reported success on those systems.
So, here is how I did it….. for all the hopefuls :
Pre-Requisites:
- Confidence to open your laptop :)
- HDD Caddy to replace the Optical Disk Drive – I got one from New Mode Electronics, which sells such caddys. This specific machine uses 12.7mm (height) slot-loading model with SATA external interface. You can buy it on ebay too for a cheaper price, but most of them ship from China and takes a long time to arrive.. and if there is a problem..its a nightmare to return or re-order.
- A second HDD
- Dell Service Manual for Studio XPS 16 series – Specially how to replace the Optical Drive
Here is the Pictorial :
Click on each of the image below to see a larger image (in a new window)
Step 01 – Ready to Dismantle the Laptop
Step 02 – Remove the Back cover (10 screws to remove)
Step 03 – Remove the Rear caps (slide, and pull out as described in the dell service manual). Don’t apply force.
Step 04 – Remove 14 screws (this is needed to remove the palm rest). On my system 10 screws were marked “P”, 2 were marked “K” and 2 were flat screws.
Step 05 – Turn over, and remove the two screws to remove the palm rest. (Point to remember – once you are done, and when you tighten this later, don’t tighten it too much, else the plastic under it would crack). Once the two screws are removed, use the two tabs to pull out the palm rest (as described in the service manual)
Step 06 – Disconnect the cables connected (by lifting the tab – again – its described very well in the service manual).
Step 07 – Remove the cables connected (two of them). Now the palm rest is free & the motherboard and the ODD is visible
Step 08 – View of the mother board and ODD
Step 09 – View of the mother board and the 3 screws that need to be removed to free the OOD
Step 10 – One screw at the back to remove the ODD. Point to note – the HDD caddy did not have this screw hole – but the HDD Caddy fits in place securely with other 3 screws.
Step 11 – the ODD is now free – You can see the inter-poser (SATA to the motherboard pins) – simply pull it out from the ODD to set it free.
Step 11a – View of ODD out of the system
Step 12 – The ODD and the HDD Caddy that I got from New Mode Electronics. There is a component that is used on the ODD to secure it to the motherboard – This needs to be removed (2 screws) and put on the new HDD caddy as shown in this image.
Step 13 – View of ODD, Securing Component, Interposer, and the HDD Caddy – all side by side.
Step 14 – The new HDD caddy with the 500 GB Seagate HDD (that came with my system), interposer and the securing component
Step 15 – Plug in the HDD caddy in the system and fasten the screws. From this point, its just a reverse process of putting things back in place (palm rest, screws, rear caps and the back cover)
Step 16 – BIOS – now shows the second HDD !
Step 17 – Window Shows the second HDD!
Total time taken from start to finish (including taking photos..etc) - 60 mins!
So, there you go.. you now have a second HDD in your laptop.. hope this pictorial helps!
What if you want to use you CD/DVD drive ?
Well, I have ordered a eSATA/USB to SATA cable. Using this cable, I can use my CD/DVD drive as an external driver (on the rare occasions that I use it!)
12 comments | February 27th, 2010 at 07:35pm
Happy new year!
Well,………… its that time of the year again where we say bye to one and welcome another!
Wishing all of you a very Happy, Prosperous and Peaceful New Year 2010!
| December 31st, 2009 at 08:18pm
Wifey’s Web!
Introducing my wife Chitra’s home page / blog! ..
Welcome to the blogsphere, dear !
| December 31st, 2009 at 08:15pm
Avatar
Saw Avatar in 3D IMAX earlier today.
Amazing… highly recommend you see this movie in 3D IMAX.. its mind blowing :)
Next up 3 Idiots! :) ……….. in 30 mins from now!
| December 28th, 2009 at 02:44pm
Pump it!!!
I am pretty sure most of you must have heard the sound track “Pump it ” by Black eyed peas. More so, you might have heard some variant of the track! When I first heard this song from the Black Eyed Peas, i was like…hmm.. i have heard that tune some where!
So, being curious, I did some search on wikipedia on this song… and was presently surprised with the history of the song… Its based on a Greek song called Misirlou.
Further digging brought up this site : http://www.dinosaurgardens.com/archives/297. The author has nicely documented the history of this song. There have been so many different versions of this song – starting from the 1930′s! Check out the progression:
- Michalis Batrinos – Mousourlou (cir. 1930)
- Danai – Misirlou (cir. 1947)
- Seymour Rexite – Miserlou (cir. 1950)
- Rabbi Abulafia – Misirlou (cir. 1951)
- The Cardinals – Misirlou (1955)
- Korla Pandit – Misirlou (1958)
- Enoch Light – Misirlou (1959)
- Martin Denny – Misirlou (1960)
- Dick Dale – Tribal Thunder (1993)
In addition to the above, this musical note has been used in various other recordings and sound tracks! No wonder, we have heard that track before! :)
| December 27th, 2009 at 11:17pm
