*HP HDX DRAGON Owners Lounge, Part 1*

I use the XB3000 dock at home.

 

Does the expansion port work with HDX Dragon?
I heard that the dock doesn't come with an adapter, will the laptop's adapter work as well?


Thanks in advance,
soda

 

Expansion port works fine, you need to buy a 90watt AC adapter for it, but that's easy to get from eBay.

I'd take the battery out while it on there too, aside from increasing temps, it starts to push the weight limit of the dock.

 

I would say that we need a program which understand format of BIOS file and can decrypt/extract modules out of it.

 

I'll post any results I get if I find any. The HP EliteBook 8730w has the 3700. If this was taken out anyone think this would wield better results or similar results to the purported Alienware pull?

 

Who knows. Likely woudn't work because it has a different BIOS. Plus, as already said, would require physical mods to fit in the HDX properly.

 

Congrats and welcome to the world of the Dragon! What specs did you get in it? I have Street Fighter but for the XBox 360..seems difficult to use without the original arcade controller, for me at least.

 

I think I have the NR9495 or something.
And I use the ps3 controller to play with the game



soda

 

Runs fine for me without AA all the way up; are you still running vista, because that may be you're likely culprit, along with anything else running. I recommend you upgrade your drivers, the stock ones are 179.XX, and nVidia has released WHQL 186.03. Lots of improvements and a few new features.

Is anyone else amazed at the performance difference in 7 over Vista with our Dragon specs?

 

cool!!! how do you use a ps3 controller with it?

 

ok the sony is sold now its time to concentrate on the dragon. For those looking to purchase a perfect condition, frankendragon... keep an eye out on the classifieds this weekend

 

try google MotioninJoy
I couldn't get the bluetooth working yet but with the usb cable works just fine.


soda

 

Do I still need an adapter for the laptop too?


soda

 

I want to eventually get that Official Street Fighter controller from the classic arcade game because I don't think I'd be able to get the Hiruken (sp) going as well or as quickly without it.

 

practice makes perfect


soda

 

Yea...I'm running Vista and you know what
I just updated the driver and it's not playable.
It loads up and everything but after the prologue when the VS screen comes up,
my screen went all black and there's an exclamation mark at the sys tray
said something about error...
I rolled back the old driver and it works fine now.
Ain't that strange?


soda

 

The error was that the driver didn't install correctly. Did you just overwrite, or did you uninstall the original first?

 

not sure...I just download the file and do an install.
doesn't it uninstall by itself first?


soda

 

For Graphics drivers its best to uninstall (NVIDIA AND PHYSX if its a separate install) and check off the delete box when you uninstall the driver if the box is there (even use DriverSweeper to make sure the NVIDIA and PHYSX stuff is gone). Then install the new driver.

 

INTEL Wifi Link 5300

Right, so I bought an Intel wifi Link 5300 and installed it in the HDX for improved connectivity and speed. Paid $20 on eBay from a vendor in China. Took a week and a half to arrive. Holiday delay I reckon.

You have to install it in the 2nd slot (the one with the black strip on it) otherwise the BIOS's whitelist will prevent the system from booting up.

I installed the old 4965 card back in so that there's no orange wifi light. I set that old card to 802.11b and reduced/disabled most options for in the control panel. Also, if you do not install or remove the 4965, you loss bluetooth.

Also, I downloaded and installed the latest vista 64 driver for the 5300 from Intel's website.

Now, off to find a reliable and compatible dual band N-router. currently rockin' the Dlink DGL-4500 gaming router on Verizon FIOS.

 

SERIOUSLY jealous about the FIOS!!! Moved from Va Beach to PCB, Fl. about two months before it hit my old neighborhood. Panama City will probably get it around 2030, lol.

Anyway, I have both the Linksys WRT610N and the D-Link DIR-855. Both excellent routers that excel in different ways.

The 610 has greater range, at least a medium size bedroom's worth, as that's what I needed to connect my boys' laptops in their rooms, about 65-70 feet and 3 interior walls away. That's on the 2.4 Ghz band. The D-link just couldn't quite make it and consistently perform well.

My HDX was a lot closer to the router and I prefer the D-Link, as my wife and swap music and video files a lot. It is about 20% faster on operations like that. But the 5 Ghz band range is limited on both routers, nothing like the 2.4 band.

Both work well for about any other application, online gaming, streaming video, wireless to Xbox360, PS3, and Wii, plus the kids' various PSP's and DS's. If anything, my Comcast 8 meg service bottlenecks, but not the routers. As a matter of fact, right now, I have 6 laptops, 1 desktop, and each of the consoles and handhelds connected in wireless mode. Not all of them are ever on at the same time, but I know all of the lappies and at least one console have been gaming/surfing at the same time with no problems (except afforementioned distance problem with D-link).

Hope this helps, ask any questions you may have.

And will also be glad to hear any performance comparisons with your new WiFi card and the 4965.

 

Nice doodz. I only remember one other person that had a 5300 in here..Maybe it was Aleic. Can't remember. Can you tell a real world difference between the two cards?

 

I hear that, though our Comcast is seriously fast (between 40-80mbps) and offers TONS of value for cheap (virtually every cable channel except the Movie Channel cheap, 2 free HD DVRs and HD Programing for a year only $13 bucks extra afterwards) EVERYONE ELSE AROUND OUR DEVELOPEMENT HAS FIOS except US.. While we wouldn't be able to get anywhere near the amount of stuff we have with Comcast for the money, the quality I think would be superior, not only in terms of how the internet is structured, but the quality of the HD picture, non interrupted Land Line phone, etc.

When did you get the DLink? I have the DIR 615 Wireless N Router I got last Black Friday. Works well but there are never enough input Ethernet ports.

For I think another $10 you get 16mbps but in real speed tests it averages between 40mbps-80mbps but many times when theres high traffic it goes to around 20-30mbps. Right now I'm getting 23 down 2.3 up.

 

i'm also planning to get this one. mine has 3945 abg, can i also put the 5300 on my dragon? are there necessary cables to buy? thanks

 

how's the 5300 for packet sniffing. some cards are compat, some are not so much just asking.

 

Yeah, I'm on board with the features of Comcast, though I don't know about cheap. My bill is ~180 bucks a month. 16 meg service isn't offered here. But I just did speedtest.net and it depends on what server you test with. San Antonio server has always been the fastest for me...29 down/ 8 up. Tallahassee, only 90 miles away clocked 13/4. Anyway, depending on what peeps in the house are doing, I do notice a traffic slowdown.

I actually got the D-link first about 8-9 months ago. Had a WRT310N that had superior range, but wanted the dual-band capability. Read a bunch of reviews and got the D-Link because the 610 was reported to have a lot of dropouts. Last month, I finally got tired of the kids having connection probs across the house, and had read that Linksys firmware fixed the drop problem, so I got the 610N. I figured it would have at least the range of the 310, so I got it, and it does.

One thing to note, I had the 310 in an upstairs bedroom of a 2 story house in Virginia. The extra height parlayed into significant distance. We had a neighbor 2 houses away that piggy-backed off my account with my permission(divorced, broke mom of 3). She had great signal strength there. That was probably 400 feet away. My current house is a single floor ranch with a lot of area, multiple interior walls. Again, the 5 Ghz band doen't like those obstacles. And the D-link didn't act well in either freq across the house.

The 610 can also hook via USB to a external hard drive for storage server capability. Pretty slick convenience.

 

Biggest improvement is that the 5300 has a better receiver. Where I once got 2/3 bars, I get 4/5. I get 270-300 Mbps connection to router. Before I was getting 120-243, with 180 avg. Even lower on the other HDX which is in the room across the hall. That HDX now gets the same 270/300.

I used to have Cablevision's Optonline. It went down too many times and I never ever got rated speed. Worse in the afternoon when all the kids in the neighborhood got home. With FIOS, speed is the same all the time and is virtually @ rated speed. It never goes down only my non-sanctioned router does. (I bypassed the Actiontec they gave me and installed the DGL-4500.) The DGL-4500 goes down like clockwork every 3 days and requires a release/renew. But I fixed that problem by reinserting the ActionTec router in front of the DGL-4500.

I'm going to look into the Linksys 610N.

My old Linksys WRT-54G was a rock.

 

glad to see the board is up. was down for several hours.

 

Yes, it'll work as described. You won't need anything else. Just switch the antenna cables from the old card unto the new.

Make sure you get one that specifically works with IBM and HP otherwise it might not work.

 

No idea. Haven't played around with wardriving since the 802.11b days.

 

Yes, I believe it was aliecgrant who first did it.

Definite difference between the cards. But you need a good router to really discern the difference. Even so, it has better range and appears to be less susceptible to interference. It even picks up neighboring routers which I haven't seen before.

 

when you switch the antennas from old to new...what happens to the 4965 that you kept in for bluetooth?

does bluetooth not rely on those antennas, or it doesn't matter, or something else i missed?

thanks.

 

ha. np. will probably order one myself. can you provide link to ebay seller, since it seems you have good experience with this. thanks.

will find out on my own. not really insinuating wardriving as related to warchalking, but penetrating networks that are fixed and little changing for different reasons. anyhow...

 

how does having both wireless cards in place effect the wireless network and sharing center or wireless software stuff thingies?

i assume you cannot just select from a drop down which one to configure/use can you?

for that matter, why did hp leave 2 slots for wireless....interesting. or is it a slot that can fit some other hardware?

 

With:
Core 625
Mem 1000 (actual 999)
Shader 1600
I got:


Stability is perfect after prolonged use. Temps are like non-OC range.

 

With Comcast I've found they pretty much give us whatever we want that I end up requesting. If its $180 for you I can't imagine what the FIOS bill would be for getting the same stuff. Black Fridays coming around the corner again.. No physical Circuit City stores to offer extra competition...I wonder if there will be any good deals. $20 bucks for the 5300 that 2.0 spent is a killer deal. Good to hear you're helping a neighbor. We get good coverage in the house of three stories with the Dlink. Do you know if all newer Dlinks do the storage serve thing? Sounds pretty cool. I guess you use the ip address to set up the server thing then?

 

Awesome. Thanks for the write up. Could you explain a bit more what you mean about how you resolved the router from going down and how you resolved it please? Thanks. Would the Linksys require that solution?

 

Bluetooth has its own antenna. But somehow HP saw fit to "integrate" the bluetooth functionality with the wifi card in slot 1. So without the 4965 (or the other card HP sold that doesn't do N), the bluetooth radio is non-functional.

This is the vendor I got it from. Bought 2 of them and they both work without a hitch.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Intel-Wifi-5300-Wireless-Mini-PCI-E-Card-For-IBM-or-HP_W0QQitemZ320389092659QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item4a98ad9533&_trksid=p3911.c0.m14&_trkparms=65%3A12|66%3A2|39%3A1|72%3A1234|293%3A1|294%3A50

 

They may have planned to sell HSPDA radio or 3G for that slot.

Anyway, having both cards in has no negative effects except you will be drawing more watts. A nominal bit more. Just set the 4965 to wifi B (802.11b), make sure your router isn't using B in mixed mode, and all will be well. If your router is set to N only or N & G, then only the 5300 can connect and be used. 4965 just sits there sniffing for B routers all day - which without antennas renders it a moot exercise.

You set the card to wifi-b by going to control panel/device manager/ networking devices. Click the advanced tab. Also turn the transmission power to lowest.

 

The Dlink DGL-4500 would fail to resolve DNS and/or route DCHP. Not really sure why this happens every 3 days like clock work when directly connected to the FIOS ONT via Cat5e. I would simply release the IP, then reboot the router every 3 days and everything was back to normal - for another 3 days. It would go for a few more days than 3 sometimes but then I would get timeouts on some websites.

So what I did was to release the IP, "uncloned" the MAc addy from the actiontec back to DGL-4500 default, then removed the DGL-4500 from the FIOS ONT and replaced it with the Verizon supplied Actiontec router. Which isn't a bad router. But it only does B & G. Then I took a cat5 cable from the actiontec plugged it into #1 lan port. The other end I plugged into the DGL-4500's #1 Lan port. Disabled the DGL-4500's DCHP server and it's all good.

What I think happens is that Verizon checks to see if the Actiontec is installed every few days (3 to be exact). When they don't find it, somehow they release the IP from their end.

Don't know really. Just a guess because I get a new IP every 3 days with the DGL-4500 release/reboot procedure. Where as with the actiontec, I get the same IP doing the same release/reboot or release/renew. Perhaps they were trying to update the firmware of the actiontec but couldn't find it so they keep trying every few days.

 

great.

is there a way to turn it off completely in the 4965? prolly not i'm guessing, if you want bluetooth.

what happens if you are on the road, and connecting to a wifi hotspot that is b (i'm sure it is very common)? just thinking ahead.

 

You can turn off the 4965 without affecting bluetooth. But you'll have an orange wifi light on all the time. Seeing it bothers me, but might not bother others. (What? No, I don't have OCD... ). If you have HP's wireless assistant loaded, you can use that to independantly control the 4965 and bluetooth. I.e., bluetooth can be on, while 4965 is off. I believe the wifi light will remain blue under this scenario.

As for if on the road and encountering wifi B, the 5300, like the 4965, can connect to B as long as you set it to 802.11a/b/g. It should be set there by default. And since it will be getting better reception than the 4965 would having no antennae connected, it would do all the work.

 

ok yes that makes sense. if however wireless assistant is on, will it only detect the 4965 in order to separate the btooth and 4965 wireless or the 5300 somehow as well, separately? 2 instances of wireless assistant?

 

It doesn't detect or control the 5300 in the 2nd slot. Neither does the quicktouch wifi button on the top panel. The 2nd mini-PCIe slot is treated as a hardware device that can only be disabled by going into control panel's device manager.

Might account for why it reconnects to the net so fast after waking from sleep.

 

I've never been able to have the HP Wireless Assistant separately control the WiFi and bluetooth. It's always been both or none! How do you independently control them?

 

In control panel, click on the HP wireless assistant. Then click the properties tab. Check the "independent controls for wireless devices" box. You should be all set from there.

 

before i was about to purchase the 5300, i saw this bad boy on intel's site:

http://www.intel.com/network/connectivity/products/wireless/wimax/wifi/index.htm

thoughts??

only $20 more on ebay at most and same price at this link http://cgi.ebay.com/New-Intel-WiMAX-WiFi-Link-5350-AGN-3x3-MIMO-Antenna_W0QQitemZ170355944409QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item27aa016bd9, besides that, any negatives?

 

also, for 4965....i found this http://downloadcenter.intel.com/filter_results.aspx?strTypes=all&ProductID=2957&OSFullName=Windows+Vista*+Home+Premium%2C+64-bit+version&lang=eng&strOSs=159&submit=Go! for latest driver.

doesn't seem like it is for the card, but look at the release notes...shows the supported adaptors http://downloadmirror.intel.com/17542/eng/relnotes.htm


looks like 12.4 instead of 12.2.x.x.x

wondering if you also used these for your 5300, or the 12.2 ones dated from the beginning of the year/last year. If so, wanna try this out and check performance of your 5300 with these drivers.

 

Don't know if it'll work with the HDX. Plus, not many Wimax networks deployed currently. And you probably would have to subscribe to them when and if they are deployed. I think having a 3G expresscard would probably be a better bet.

 

That's the one I'm using. When installed its version number is 12.4.0.21. What I like about it is that it allows you to select the channel width for 2.4ghz. 20hz, 40hz or auto. The Dlink DGL-4500 router I have has the same ability so now I can match selections for both.