I've been wasting a bit of time on eBay recently.

I haven't really been looking for anything specific that I need, just sort of browsing through the junk.

I've been thinking about getting a UPS, because of all the power issues I've been having (one of these days I'm going to be in the middle of updating the flash on something, and then power will go off, and the device will get stuffed).

I haven't found a cheap one, and I don't want to pay stacks for shipping either, which doesn't leave me with much choice.

Instead I've been browsing through laptop accessories.

There's a few things I wouldn't mind getting, like one of those neoprene laptop sleeve things, so I can have my laptop protected, and just put it in a backpack or something.

I haven't been able to find much in the way of that so far, so I've got a couple of bids on backpacks for laptops.

I looked for a wireless card for my mate, and ended up getting a Netgear MA401 for $15, not too bad.

I also managed to get myself a 4 port USB hub for $14 (including the shipping).

While browsing, I came across a 4mb linear flash card. I seem to recall wanting one of these for something. Ah, I remember.. installing OpenAP.

You need a 2mb SRAM or linearly mapped memory card to update the flash in the 2652W AP.

I've got one of those, but I didn't think it worked anymore (it seemed to die for some reason).

Anyway, maybe I can update the busted AP to OpenAP, and get it going again. I googled around, and found this page.

I tried going to the OpenAP site, but discovered that the homesite of OpenAP is gone, and redirects to some stupid page.

I went back to reading the Seattle wireless page, mainly the references to the SRAM stuff at the bottom. A bit more googling around, and I figured that this card would work for loading OpenAP.

I also found a page in Spanish, here, mentioning using the card I was looking at, and saying it was suitable for OpenAP.

I went and put a bid on the card, I can always using it as 4mb of storage, even if it's no good for OpenAP, or the AP doesn't work.

I kept reading, and luckily I found a mirror of most of the content from the original OpenAP site, here.

Except it doesn't seem to have the sram.img file for download, only the sources, and according to this message on the mailing list, "Don't use the sources from OpenAP website! They are broken."

Great.

At this point, I decided to test the AP, I looked for it, found it (half buried under papers on the desk).

Then I realised that I left my adjustable power adapter 'round at my mate's place, with my other AP (2655W), so I had to find another one to run it.

I found an adapter for it (it needs 9V/1A I think), but the first one I found was only 5v.

I also rigged up the serial lead to the serial port on it.

I tried booting it with the 5v adapter, but I doubted that was going to work. I tried it, the LEDs would flash a bit, but it didn't seem to boot or do anything.

I found a 9V one, but it seems to be stuffed, wouldn't even spark if I briefly shorted it (has no plug, only bare wires).

I then grabbed my 12v supply, and hooked up some aligator leads to supply power. The AP looked a bit more promising.

I fiddled around with the speed of the com port on my laptop, and found that 19200 was the most promising, but hitting enter would only ever return "..S402FD00".

I dunno what that means, and google turned up nothing.

I had nothing in the PCMCIA port, I wondered if it was something to do with that.

I put the 2632W card back in it (I wasn't using it in my laptop), and tried booting again.

I'd see the WLAN activity LED flash a bit, but the terminal still only returned "..S402FD00" as before.

I wondered if there was anything going on, so I decided to try tcpdumping the etherner interface on my laptop, with the AP connected directly to it.

I grabbed a patch lead, and then when the link didn't come up, realised that I needed a crossover cable. Bugger, should have bought that crossover yesterday.

I wondered about using the spare WRT54G as a switch (since my spare hub went back into use, as a 10bT -> 10b2 converter).

When I looked, I realised that the WRT54G has a 12v 1A supply. I decided to try this, instead of the hooked up supply.

I found this worked too (no change in the terminal though).

I decided to just plug the AP into the LAN, with a spare lead that was hanging around. I wasn't sure if it would update it's settings (via DHCP), so I rebooted the AP.

I wondered if the AP was actually doing something. I ran up kismet, and saw "WLAN".

Hmm, that's pretty promising. It was highlighted in red for some reason, and when I looked at the details, kismet said that the AP had "FACTORY DEFAULTS", which I figure is why it was red.

When I exited out of kismet, the green WLAN link LED on the AP went on, I checked, and I was now connected to it.

I tried using DHCP, and got an IP address. It seems like it's working.

I wondered if it was available on the network, because both this one, and the 2655W became impossible to manage via the web interface.

I ran a ping scan of the LAN using nmap.

The first things I saw were:

Starting nmap 3.81 ( http://www.insecure.org/nmap/ ) at 2005-09-01 01:48 EST
Happy 8th Birthday to Nmap, may it live to be 108!

Heh, nice message.

Anyway, the thing of interest:

Host DHCPCLIENT.squigley.net (192.168.0.96) appears to be up.
MAC Address: 00:90:D1:00:D1:DB (Leichu Enterprise CO.)

Hmm, I don't recognise that manufacturer.

I attempted to connect to the IP address, and bam, a login screen. Wow, this thing looks fully functional.

Now I had to remember the default login details. I tried all the usuals, admin/admin, admin/password etc, but nothing would get me in.

I even tried admin/smcadmin, but that didn't work.

I checked the password lists, and found it, the default details are admin/WLAN_AP. Of course they are, I remember now.

I logged in, clicked around a bit, it all looked fine. I don't really need another AP though, so I don't know what I'll do with it.

Maybe I could put the Xircom wired card in it, and use the 10b2 dongle on it, and use it instead of the hub, but I don't know what that would achieve.

Update: well I won my flash card, the auction is here.

My mate was after a bluetooth adapter, to use with his phone too, so I bid on one of those, a USB dongle, and won it, the auction is here.

I'm trying to get a laptop backpack at the moment, so that I can carry my laptop around a bit more easily, and without it being so obvious, and I'll need it for when I get my license back in 8 1/2 weeks. I keep getting outbid on them, but there's stacks on there, so I'll get one soon enough.

Paypal is really being a pain today. It took me most of the day to pay for the bluetooth dongle.