Tech | The Webernets

Mac OSX Lion broke my Gigabit Network!

August 11, 2011October 22, 2011 The Webernets4 Comments

I have just been trying to shift some large files around my home network, and found the transfer speeds to be down on what I am used to.So I set about finding out what the problem was. I started by opening the system preferences, and clicked the Network icon.In the left side window I had to highlight the connected Ethernet port (the one with the green circle next to it), as my machine has two ports, and the one that wasn’t connected was selected when I opened the window as shown below. Once I selected the connected port, I clicked the Advanced button to open up all the good stuff.

From here, I clicked the Hardware button to see what was going on. As expected, my machine had auto-negotiated a 100MBPS connection, instead of the much faster 1000MBPS Gigabit connection I have come to love so much.So once I changed Automatic, to Manual, and selected 1000MBPS with Full Duplex, flow control, and set my MTU to Jumbo 9000 (Where it has always been), I saved the settings, rebooted and was ready to enjoy my super-fast network!

Huh? What? Why? – Then the expletives came! Why wasn’t my Gigabit connection working? – I went back in and found the Green circle was gone – Replaced with a very unattractive and disheartening RED circle! A desperate flurry of disconnections, reconnection and more expletives occurred. Sitting helplessly on the floor next to my Gigabit switch, head in hands, my attention was drawn to the pretty color cables…….

This post is dedicated to that gorgeous yellow ethernet cable. Oh yellow ethernet cable, how I love you! It turns out that for some reason, Lion doesnt recognise the 33 miles of blue Cat 5(e) cable I have running around the house as Gigabit capable like Snow Leopard used to! I removed the blue cable, and plugged a black CAT 6 cable I had (Which I never really understood why it was different until today) and beautiful Green lights lit up everywhere! In my connections window, on the switch, it was SUCH a relief!

After a bit of Googling, I learned quiet a few people are having this problem, and not all cables are created equal.

The short solution to the problem is change your cables to Cat 6, and for the reason why (if you are interested in the nuts and bolts) can be found in THIS article on Answers.com.

**UPDATE**

22OCT11 – Apple appear to have rectified this issue in the latest update to OSX Lion (10.7.2) – I have been using my Macbook Pro at Gigabit speed using blue cat 5 cable for a few days now. Can anybody else confirm?

ADSL Line Parameters

August 6, 2011August 11, 2011 The Webernets0 comment

I learned this week that “Automatic” often means “Crap” in the world of network auto negotiations – I have a new internet connection, and when I allow my modem to auto-negotiate a connection, it gets “taken for a fool” by my ISP. I guess the ISP want’s to stop me from using all of the bandwidth I pay for, so they “encourage” customers modems to auto negotiate a slower connection. Upon digging into my ADSL 2+ modems settings, I found that under the “Line Mode” option in the ADSL Parameters menu, I could FORCE my modem to negotiate the ADSL2+ connection I am paying for, instead of the slower standard generic ADSL profile my ISP sneakily seems to want the device to auto negotiate.

If your connection seems to be slow, check your ADSL Parameter settings and make sure your line mode is equivalent to the ADSL plan you are paying for.

WD TV Live Hub Boot Failure – Auto Shut Down Power Button Problem

August 5, 2011August 5, 2011 The Webernets12 Comments

As mentioned in THIS post, I bought a WD TV Live Hub unit a month ago, and I have been fairly happy with it so far. The premise/purpose of the unit is good, it is well featured in hardware, but the firmware/operating system is not as good as it could be, given the potential of the units hardware capabilities. I have found it to be slow, kinda clunky, and a bit frustrating when it comes to finding media quickly, as I have a large collection. The current version at time of writing is 2.07.17. Since purchasing the machine I have tried several versions of the firmware, and have settled/rolled back (using WD’s own rollback instructions and previous OS builds on the WD Firmware Rollback Page) to version 2.04.13, which in my opinion, and the WD Community opinion, seems to be the best offering so far.

Last week however, my 3 week old unit simply refused to boot. It didn’t work. I would press the power button on the remote and see the screen above, and then the unit would just turn itself off. I tried the using the power button on the unit, and it yielded the same result, automatic shut down after the loading screen. I was quiet enraged. My wife gathered up the units box, dug the receipt out, and was set to drive me back to the store to exchange the unit, when I proceeded to do what any grumpy male geek with a failing piece of technology would do – I took to it with a screwdriver, pried it open and voided the warranty!

I did learn a lot about this unit during this process though, and will share it with you now – and as always, I am sharing MY experience! Should you CHOOSE to try to replicate my experience with your device, and FAIL, it is completely your own fault, and I take no responsibility what so ever!

After Googling the symptoms, it appears that this is a VERY common problem with this unit, and the folks at WD refuse to acknowledge it as an issue. However, there is a VERY simple fix, but it does involve opening the unit. Inside the box is the main PCB (Printed Circuit Board), and there is a smaller PCB for the POWER button connected to the main PCB with a few wires. This seems odd for the power button to be on a different board, but it is a gift from god that it has been designed this way. It seems that something on the smaller power PCB, or perhaps the power button itself shorts/fails, hence as soon as you start the unit, the switch thinks its been pressed and it turns the unit off.

The cure, simply disconnect the smaller power button PCB. YES, you read correctly, just disconnect it! There is a power button on the remote you can use to switch the unit on and off anyways. The ironic part of this is that I actually found it harder to open the unit than disconnect the power button PCB. My first instinct was to crank on the thick chunky bit of plastic with the scallop shapes, but I soon learned that this was just an aesthetic, the actual lid is the thin piece above the groove in the aesthetic scallop bit.

To open the case, take your preferred case opening screwdriver and insert it between the thick bit and the thinner top panel at the back of the unit above the composite (yellow) video output.

Once you have made a gap you will see the fastening tabs that hold the lid on, and its just a matter of forcing the top upwards and gently pushing the fastening tabs towards the inside of the case. Below shows you the different types of tabs you will need to defeat to lift the lid.

Once you have the lid off, its a simple matter off locating the power button PCB, and the wires that join it to the main PCB. The power button PCB wires mount to the main PCB underneath, but the white terminal is easily visible, and requires little effort to disconnect. I just flicked it of with the screwdriver I used to open the case.

Once the wire is disconnected, you can re-fit the top panel, plug the box in again, and watch your unit boot back into that familiar home screen!

Now, if you want to win a prize (Charlie Sheen’s Tiger Blood), look closely at the photo’s in this article and be the first to comment with the reason why everybody who reads these articles should take extra special note of my disclaimers, and why Australian Geek Guys die younger than American Geeks!

Screen Captures on iPhone and iPad

August 5, 2011August 5, 2011 The Webernets0 comment

Have you ever been browsing in Safari on your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad and wanted to capture a screen shot of a web page? Perhaps you have transferred some money in your bank accounts and want a quick grab of the reference number? This is actually a feature that is built right into iOS4!

To capture the screen of your device to a JPEG picture image at any time, all you have to do is hold down the “Home” button, then press the top button, and release them both together. Your screen will flash, the device will make the camera “snap/click” sound, and the screen will be saved as a JPEG image in your camera roll, to do with what you please.

COOL HUH!

Identify unknown Video Codecs

July 27, 2011August 12, 2011 The Webernets0 comment

Have you ever been sent a video, or downloaded a video from the internet that just wont play? Isn’t it frustrating! Most times it is because the video has been encoded with a codec (compressor/decompressor) that is not on your computer, therefore your system doesn’t know how to play the file.

There are a lot of tools out there to help you with this problem, and with only a few of them, you will be able to play 99% of everything you come across easily.

If you have a windows computer, you will need to download “G-Spot” codec identifier.

And for Mac users, “Video Spec” codec identifier is an equivalent.

Once you have downloaded and installed your codec identifier, just drag and drop your pesky video file onto it, and the identifier will analyse it and tell you everything you wanted to know about it, as well as a bunch of stuff you didn’t! Once you have identified the codecs used in creating the file, you can set about searching for it, installing it, and enjoying your video.

As mentioned in my “How to play almost any video with VLC Media Player” post HERE, you can play pretty much anything with VLC Media Player 😉 – But if you don’t want to download a new player, and you are happy using Windows Media Player, or Quicktime, there are some FREE “plugins” which add extended capabilities to your favorite media player. Windows users will definitely want to get your hands on the K-Lite codec pack. There are small, medium, and large packs, but again, 99% of everything you will want to watch will work if you install the “Standard” pack. For Mac owners, Perian is definitely the first plugin you will want. It will allow you to play AVI, XVID, DIVX, FLV and MKV straight away, and for those who want to watch Windows WMV files, Flip For Mac is the solution. If you go to their site, they will push you hard towards their paid version, but there is a free version if you go via Microsoft HERE which will do everything you want it to do.

How to play almost any media file on Windows, Mac or Linux/Unix

July 12, 2011August 12, 2011 The Webernets0 comment

If you have a Windows based computer, and someone sends you a Quicktime video, or if you have a Mac, and you want to watch an AVI or a WMV video, your computer just isn’t going to play it for you without some additional software. Over the years I have experimented with a lot of different programs, but there really is only one program users of all platforms require – Videolans VLC Media Player. It will play just about everything (including DVD’s and Audio Cd’s), regardless of your operating system and installed codecs, it supports playlists for audio and video, supports sending and receiving streams, and has tons of tweaks to allow you to adjust everything from brightness and contrast, to Digital Audio pass-thru for those of us using Dolby Digital/DTS enabled audio cards with Digital Coax or Fibre Optical SPDIF audio outputs. Below are the supported video playback formats:

And the supported audio playback formats:

These are the supported Audio/Video outputs:

There are also some filters that you can apply to the playback.

The main one I find useful is the de-interlace filter, which stops you getting the “stripped” effect when watch fast moving scenes in a interlaced video (like shown below)

VLC Media Player also supports many formats of subtitles:

But the best part about VLC Media Player, it is ABSOLUTELY FREE!

So go and download it now at VideoLAN.org!

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