NetStatRF - load of ****?

[Davidish]

Excuse the rather harsh subject, but I wanted to get to the point. Has anbody got it to work? I use a Cisco Aironet 340 WLAN card and it is the bee's knees. But launch NetStatRF and if I'm to believe the "About NetStatRF" window then I am 'Not supported"! :mad: Only Lucent WaveLan and Orinoco Radios are mentioned.... how disappointing. :(

Is that correct? Or has anybody with the cisco got it to respond?

FYI, when I hit the "Card Information" button on the menu I just get "Card not active" Error message - a likely story, my Opera is running happily in the background meanwhile, honest.

D

[diem]

You mention in your previous post that you've used your old CommsDB.dat file. Now I'll admit I don't know anyone else with a Cisco WLAN card, but I do know that the layout of that file has changed between OS revisions, so mebbe using a vanilla copy would help?

[fladda]

I use a Lucent Orinoco 802.11b card in my Netbooks. NetStatRF is a very useful utility indeed. Top marks to Psion Teklogix for adding this utility to the released operating system. I suspect that NetStatRF was originally developed for internal Psion use only ?

Ralph

[allan]

Yes, NetstatRF seems only to work with the Lucent card, not the Cisco (I've used both).

NetstatRF is really nice to have, and for that matter only the Lucent card supports WEP and other features; but all the same I find I use the Cisco card in preference because it doesn't block the stylus opening in the netbook like the Lucent card does.

Graham

[fladda]

What you need is a Psism II based 802.11b card. These behave in a similar manner to Lucent Orinoco cards, yet their aerials are only standard PCMCIA type-1 thickness. Allows stylus to be removed with card installed. However the Orinoco aerial probably gives superior RF performance.

Suggest that most popular Prism II based cards are:-

1. Older Netgear MA-401 with large picture of figure standing on a pile of cogs.

2. SMC-2632 (version 1).

I posted a whole list of Prism II 802.11b cards onto the 7Book group. Note that this list also includes the newer Prism2.5 based cards that DO NOT appear to work in the Netbook. Would be nice to receive reports of other Prism II cards working in the Netbook.

Incidentally am I the only one who cannot really see the point of having a separate group for the upgraded series 7 - i.e. 7Book. Apart from the current limiting issue on the Series 7, an upgraded 7 is virtually identical in operation to the Netbook. Therefore the majority of the posts to the 7Book group are also highly relevent to thi Netbook group. Suggest that after a few weeks posts to the 7Book group will drop to near zero ?

Ralph

[diem]

mebbe you're right ralph - i thought it worth creating the separate forum for 7Book certainly while we were learning the differences, but once we've got a handle on which cards work in which 'age' of machine, then we may drop the separate forum.

What do you think of requesting owners to quote their serial numbers to give us a more accurate idea of when the current capacity was increased? I can't see how these might be mis-used, yet something has stopped me asking up 'til now.

[pro2type]

Agree, The 7book forum is nice. One of the crucial issues on the 7book is the ability to use WLAN, and a special forum for fx. finding the right WLAN card and other things is great.

[netBookBabe]

I think the separate 7book forum was very much needed, certainly during the initial upgrade frenzy. Users were confused about which forum to post in, so threads were getting somewhat fragmented.

As Yan says, we may scale it down at a later date, but for now I think it's serving well for what is, after all, a pretty unique machine! :)

Julie

[bobbyr]

I agree with Julie and Yan that a seperate category is needed as the 7book might have its unique things that we might want to address that might not do the same on the Netbook. If we find later that most things are the same, then maybe bring them together.

Thanks,

Bobbyr

[netBookBabe]

Originally posted by diem
What do you think of requesting owners to quote their serial numbers to give us a more accurate idea of when the current capacity was increased? I can't see how these might be mis-used, yet something has stopped me asking up 'til now. I went away to think about this for a while, and I can't really see a problem. After all, it would be voluntary, so nobody has to give out a serial number if they are not comfortable in doing so. I would not have a problem with quoting mine - except that mine is a netBook, born and bred, so not helpful in this situation!

I think the information gained here could be mutually beneficial, so I think maybe you should go ahead with the request, Yan.

Julie

[wanman]

One word of caution before you all start quoting your serial numbers. Please be aware that if you machine is still under warranty, and you post a message confirming you have tampered with your standard Psion unit (You Frankenstein 7book owners know who you are!!), then this could affect the acceptance of possible future warranty work on your machine.

Now before you write anything, no I don't think Psion are sat reading all our messages trying to locate all those nasty Psion tinkerers so that they can specifically reject warranty claims but this is something to think about as Psion employee's do occasionaly use this site to get tips on how they work and how to fix them.....lol
(btw if Psion is reading this message, please ignore all my other postings about upgrading my machine to a 7book as I would never do anything to harm your baby. I have just been hypothesising and have definitely not inserted a netbook personality chip in my 7, thus invalidating my outstanding warranty !) .


Back on subject though, I don't see any harm in posting our serials but am not overly sure that we will be able to gain any useful information from them. We have never been able to ascertain the build number/type of our machines from the serial number in the past, and unless we have access to Psion's databases, I doubt we will ever be able to.

Of course I could be entirely wrong and await the relevant moderator message telling me to wind my kneck in !! lol

Si

[diem]

Originally posted by wanman
Back on subject though, I don't see any harm in posting our serials but am not overly sure that we will be able to gain any useful information from them. We have never been able to ascertain the build number/type of our machines from the serial number in the past, and unless we have access to Psion's databases, I doubt we will ever be able to.

Of course I could be entirely wrong and await the relevant moderator message telling me to wind my kneck in !! lol

Si

LOL!! U makes oi larf Si :)

The thing is, I happen to know that, due to changes in location of manufacture over the years, even Psion don't know what 7/nB serial numbers are what age of motherboard! This was going to be my stab at working it out.

Having thought about it though, the implied accuracy of quoting a range of serial numbers would work against us - I doubt we'd ever exactly nail the crossover points, thus I'm not going down that route; I'm sticking with the 'fuzziness' of asking for OS build number, since it has yielded good results so far.

[wanman]

I think you are probably right Yan. Although the idea was sound enough, I was not sure what sort of quantity of serial numbers you would need to provide a decent level of accuracy on predicting the MB type?

It would also help knowing at what stage the serial number is applied. If it is just a sequentially numbered sticker placed on the unit before it is boxed (quite likely) then finding the cut off points between motherboards would be incredibly difficult.

[netBookBabe]

Originally posted by wanman

(btw if Psion is reading this message, please ignore all my other postings about upgrading my machine to a 7book as I would never do anything to harm your baby. I have just been hypothesising and have definitely not inserted a netbook personality chip in my 7, thus invalidating my outstanding warranty !) ...

Of course I could be entirely wrong and await the relevant moderator message telling me to wind my kneck in !! lol ...

Great post, Si - this particular "relevant moderator" enjoyed it a lot! Oh, sorry, that was "relevant message" was it? LOL!

Re the serial numbers - even if they were logical I'm thinking we wouldn't get sufficient to draw a clear picture, and it sounds like they are pretty random from what Yan is saying.

Yan, I know you're a glutton for punishment, but this does sound like nervous breakdown territory! Shall we agree to an end to the great serial number debate as of now?

:)

Julie