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jonazen
Be Like Water My Friend
Premium Member
join:2004-02-18
Princeton Junction, NJ

jonazen

Premium Member

new Atheros software?

I periodically search the net for new versions of Atheros drivers & utilities, and just came across something interesting.

A company called Valemount Networks publishes StarOS, a linux-based operating system designed to let you turn a pc into a sophisticated access point, including features such as multi-NIC support, and among other things, it supports use of Atheros cards in the box. This could be very useful if anyone wants to use a card based on an Atheros AR5002 (5212) or an AR5004x (that's the a/b/g card) in a pc intended to be set up as an access point.

Additionally, I found another piece of software on their site, labeled VNC CM-9 (Atheros AR5004) Windows Drivers, version 3.3.0.145. It's available at the following link:
»www.star-os.com/download ··· 0145.zip

The page that describes it is:
»www.star-os.com/download ··· reestuff

The beginning of the "net5211.inf" in the install directory reads as follows:
;/*++
;
;Copyright (c) 2001-2004 Atheros Communications, Incorporated All Rights Reserved
;
;Module Name:
;
; net5211.inf
;
;Abstract:
; INF file for installing Atheros AR5001 Wireless Network Adapter
;
; Installs ar5211.sys (NDIS 5/5.1 driver) on NT platforms (2000, XP and greater)
; Installs ar52119x.sys (NDIS 5 driver) on 9x platforms
;
;--*/

[Version]
Signature = "$CHICAGO$"
Class = Net
ClassGUID = {4d36e972-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}
Provider = %ATHEROS%
Compatible = 1
DriverVer = 06/17/2004,3.3.0.145
Catalogfile = net5211.cat

If I'm interpreting this correctly, it appears to be version 3.3.0.145 of the Atheros driver that support the AR5002 and AR5004x chipsets. The first is the one in the DWL-g650 and DWL-g520.

This also seems consistent with the numbering we've seen on other Atheros drivers posted here, all in the 3.x.x.x range -- but this appears to be the latest version yet.

I haven't tried it myself just yet, but I'm intrigued, and think that this might turn out to the the "latest and greatest" driver / utility combo available to support the dwl-g650.

I'm going to give it a try at some point when I can arrange the time. If anyone else is game, please try it and post results!
jonazen

jonazen

Premium Member

OK - I decided to be the guinea pig, and I'm back to report success!

I went through the following steps:
1) I downloaded the Atheros driver (from the first link in the posting above) to my laptop.

2) I removed the dwl-g650 from the laptop

3) I uninstalled the D-Link driver and utility

4) I installed the new driver (from the Install CD directory that was created when I unzipped the driver zip), and checked the option to install both the Atheros driver and the Atheros utility.

5) I made sure that I was NOT using Windows to manage the wireless connection, but used the utility instead.

6) I ran through basic configuration, rebooted, and was instantly connected to my di-624 rev_C2.

In the network connections property, I can see that the AEGIS protocol (IEEE 802.1x) v2.3.1.9 is installed.

The NIC now shows up as an Atheros Wireless Network Adapter.

The Driver shows up as follows:
Provider: Atheros
Date: 6/17/2004
Version: 3.3.0.145

...and the driver file is ar5211.sys

The client utility is excellent, and offers lots of info, as does the tray utility.

I current have a 108 mbps connection to the di-624, and tried copying a large compressed file from the laptop across the di-624 to one of my wired pc's. It zipped through at just about 30 mbps (real world speed).

This seems to be the very latest Atheros driver available, and appears to work very well.

If anyone is still having trouble with their dwl-g650, I urge you to give this a try.

Once again, the download page is:
»www.star-os.com/download ··· reestuff

...and the driver download itself is:
»www.star-os.com/download ··· 0145.zip

Please check it out and share your experiences here. This appears to connect to the di-624 faster than the D-Link 3.17 driver (atheros 3.0.0.?), offers more information and options, and probably addresses some of the bugs people have experienced. It seems to be fast and works quite well.
jonazen

jonazen

Premium Member

Excellent new Atheros driver for dwl-g650

Just want to be sure everyone with a dwl-g650 sees my last post about the new 3.3.0.145 driver I found and just tried out. Seems to be the latest and greatest from Atheros.

While my LAN had been working generally very well before, it's definitely better than before (since I started using this new driver) in at least one respect. Earlier, all machines (wired and wireless) enjoyed excellent speedy connections to the Internet. All machines could browse each other. I could transfer files from the wireless desktop (with a g520) to any of the wired machines at good speed (approx 30 mbps). However the speed between the laptop (with the dwl-g650) and the wired segment of the LAN always felt sluggish when using the D-Link 3.17 driver.

Now, with the new Atheros driver installed on the laptop, the communications between the laptop and the wired segment of the LAN is every bit as zippy as the connection between the g520 and the wired portion of the LAN had been before. I also verified that the wireless machines can transfer files back and forth between each other just as quickly also.

The entire network seems to be humming along beautifully now.

New driver highly recommended.

Once again, the download page is:
»www.star-os.com/download ··· reestuff

...and the driver download itself is:
»www.star-os.com/download ··· 0145.zip

brett_
Premium Member
join:2000-07-22
Lombard, IL

brett_

Premium Member

Just installed it on a IBM 600E Thinkpad running XP Pro with a DWL-G650 Rev B and it seems to be working just fine with my DI-624 Rev C. Good find!

jonazen
Be Like Water My Friend
Premium Member
join:2004-02-18
Princeton Junction, NJ

jonazen

Premium Member

The utility also provides a LOT of good info, including "live" displays of Current Signal Strength, Current Noise Level and uptime, along with Current Receive Rate and Current Transmit Rate and Current Power Level (as well as all the available power levels for the NIC).

The Advanced Statistics screen also provides live detailed info about Frame transmission, success, errors, ACK and No ACK frames, etc, along with Receive stats including detailed counts of success and errors (e.g., frames received with errors, CRC errors, Encryption Errors, Duplicate Frames, AP mismatches, etc, etc, etc.)

All-in-all it seems to be an excellent driver and superior network connection management utility.

brett_
Premium Member
join:2000-07-22
Lombard, IL

brett_

Premium Member

So this makes me ask this question again: Why doesn't D-Link supply this driver and client, rather than their own crappy ones that don't seem to work nearly as well?
FordTractor
join:2003-03-25
Fishers, IN

FordTractor to jonazen

Member

to jonazen
Great find jonazen! Those of us with DWL-G650's appreciate it. I'm downloading it now to give it a whirl on two laptops.

jonazen
Be Like Water My Friend
Premium Member
join:2004-02-18
Princeton Junction, NJ

jonazen to brett_

Premium Member

to brett_
Only reason I can imagine that D-Link doesn't offer this directly is that it appears to offer some security options that their access points do NOT offer (EAP, LEAP, etc.).

Maybe they want to get these working in the whole product line first? Who knows. Just a guess.

Maybe it's the whole OEM situation: drivers provided by a chip manufacturer like Atheros would have to be supported by them. Atheros probably doesn't WANT to be in that business. So they have the various hardware OEM's repackage the chipsets in proprietary cards, and rebundle the core driver in the OEM's driver package - which is now distributed with the hardware, and supported by the OEM instead of Atheros.

All just speculation.

Just glad that SOMEBODY sees fit to post recent versions of the genuine Atheros driver and client utility.

brett_
Premium Member
join:2000-07-22
Lombard, IL

brett_

Premium Member

Make sure you play around with the Linkmon utility that is is placed in the Linkmon folder that is created when you extract the files. Even more diagnostic goodies. I put it in the C:\Program Files\Atheros folder, created a shortcut to it, and it appears to run without any problems.

jonazen
Be Like Water My Friend
Premium Member
join:2004-02-18
Princeton Junction, NJ

jonazen

Premium Member

I tried running it from the unzip folder, and it couldn't find my NIC. I'll try moving it to the Atheros folder and firing it up again.
jonazen

jonazen

Premium Member

Still no go - Linkmon starts right up, but doesn't see my dwl-g650. The NIC dropdown is empty. Suggestions?
jonazen

jonazen

Premium Member

Still can't get Linkmon to show me anything. Also came across "athdiag.exe" - the Atheros diagnostic utility - in the program files/atheros directory. But it complains that my network adapter (the dwl-g650) is not supported.
jonazen

jonazen

Premium Member

OK - I disabled and re-enabled the network connection (and the wireless connection came up virtually instantly), restarted LinkMon, and now it see the NIC and shows all the stats.

brett_
Premium Member
join:2000-07-22
Lombard, IL

brett_ to jonazen

Premium Member

to jonazen
Don't know what to tell you. In the Linkmon dropdown box it sees my card as a "Atheros AR5001X+ Wireless Network Adapter" and I'm able to pull up the stats and enable logging.

However, I do get the "Your card is not supported" message if I try to run athdiag.exe.

It also shows my "wireless mode" as 2.4GHz 54 Mbps no matter what I do and I can't connect to the DI-624 when it is in static turbo mode. This is no different than my experience with the previous Atheros drivers.
jb503
join:2004-01-20
Dallas, TX

jb503 to jonazen

Member

to jonazen

.

Yes!!

Works on my:

DI-624 Rev C, DWL-G650 Rev B, Thinkpad A22p, Win2K

I had to manually install the Aegis5 supplicant after running the Atheros driver setup. Currently connected at 108 Mbps with WPA PSK, and -43 dBm signal level.

jonazen
Be Like Water My Friend
Premium Member
join:2004-02-18
Princeton Junction, NJ

jonazen to brett_

Premium Member

to brett_

Re: Excellent new Atheros driver for dwl-g650

Interesting:

Now that Linkmon can see my NIC, it shows up ats "Atheros Wireless Network Adapter" - no model number mentioned.

Also - at the bottom of Linkmon in its status windows, it's showing TX 108 Mbps and Rx 108 Mbps. When I hover over the Windows network tray icon, it shows Speed 108 mbps.

The Atheros Client Utility, on the "Current Status" tab, shows my Wireless Mode as 2.4 GHz 108 Mbps.

The advanced status tab shows my Current Receive Rate and Current Transmit Rate as both being 108 Mbps, my Signal Strength as -47 dBm, and current noise level at -88 dBm.

In the DI-624, I'm set to Short Preamble, 802.11g Only Mode enabled, CTS mode disabled, and Super G with Static Turbo.

Also have TX rate at top of Advanced/Performance tab set to 108 Mbps instead of Auto.

Fubar12345
Premium Member
join:2001-01-27
Rogersville, MO

Fubar12345

Premium Member

Anyone know (I haven't tried yet) if this driver will work for the DWL-G520 series?

jonazen
Be Like Water My Friend
Premium Member
join:2004-02-18
Princeton Junction, NJ

jonazen

Premium Member

I haven't tried it yet. Considering, though, that the 3.17 driver from D-Link is the same for both cards (g520 and g650), I'm guessing that the Atheros driver will also work for the g520.

I don't have time to try it now, but I think I may give it a try tomorrow or over the weekend.

Should be safe to try. If it doesn't work - uninstall and put the D-Link 3.17 driver back.
jonazen

jonazen

Premium Member

What might explain differences between the way the new driver supports various cards:

DWL-G520 (Atheros AR5212A)
DWL-G650, version B1 (Atheros AR5211)
DWL-G650, version B2 (Atheros AR5001)
DWL-AG520 (Atheros AR5212)
DWL-AB650 (Atheros AR5211)
DWL-AG650 (Atheros AR5212)

I believe the driver will support ALL of these, but depending on the chip, we'll experience different behavior.

brett_
Premium Member
join:2000-07-22
Lombard, IL

brett_

Premium Member

That was my theory since I'm working with a fairly current and clean install of XP. so I shouldn't have any leftover garbage influencing the way the NIC operates.
kareshi7
join:2003-03-17
Markham, ON

kareshi7 to jonazen

Member

to jonazen

Re: new Atheros software?

Installed with DWL-AG660 and it's working fine!

augustus_meyer
@mediaWays.net

augustus_meyer to Fubar12345

Anon

to Fubar12345

Re: Excellent new Atheros driver for dwl-g650

Yea, it works on my G520, installed under W2k.
I had 3.1.1.48 installed before, but this has some more advantages:
- Better info when positioning cursor on top of tray-smbol
- LINKMON-utility
- Easier installation. I simply uninstalled 3.1.1.48, rebooted, installed this new one running \Install_CD\Setup.exe, and it worked. No confusion with Japane language any more.
Looks like (German) perfection to me now. Recommended !

Next I will try installation for my G650.
DrNic
join:2004-05-30
UK

DrNic to jonazen

Member

to jonazen

Re: new Atheros software?

Does this Atheros Driver/utility support the DWL-650 C2 Revision??? I don't think i can see a mention in any of the posts about the revision numbers supported.
Thanks
DrNic

jonazen
Be Like Water My Friend
Premium Member
join:2004-02-18
Princeton Junction, NJ

jonazen

Premium Member

DrNic -

Yes - mine is a g650 C2. Works beautifully with the new driver / utility.
DrNic
join:2004-05-30
UK

DrNic

Member

OK
Went for it and installed the drivers and utility!!
Things do seem improved - I now get a vastly improved signal strength - don't know how that happened!!! The utility is fucntional, but doesn't really offer anything THAT useful, but it is certainly an improvement on the DLink one!!!
One gripe I do have.....
Installing this driver/client combo has disabled the XP welcome logon screen. I know this doesn't alter functionality but it is less pretty and a little more cumbersome to switch users....
The only way to get this back is, you guessed it, uninstall the software!!!

dcurrey
Premium Member
join:2004-06-29
Mason, OH

dcurrey

Premium Member

said by DrNic:

Installing this driver/client combo has disabled the XP welcome logon screen. I know this doesn't alter functionality but it is less pretty and a little more cumbersome to switch users....
The only way to get this back is, you guessed it, uninstall the software!!!

Glad I am not the only one that ran into this. After installing the software I get the old NT/2000 type login screen. However my login sometimes would just hang and I would have to do a reboot.

Also had to set my di-624 back to dynamic turbo g. Static Turbo worked with the 2.x something atheros drivers

Doug

jonazen
Be Like Water My Friend
Premium Member
join:2004-02-18
Princeton Junction, NJ

jonazen to DrNic

Premium Member

to DrNic
I noticed that the XP Welcome Screen changed over to the "classic" login screen also.

I just went into Control Panel / User Accounts, and tried to "change the way users log in", and the error dialog pops up indication that:

A recently installed program has disabled the Welcome screen and Fast User Switching. To restore these features, you must uninstall the program. The following file name might help you identify the program that made the change: athgina.dll.

I'm not thrilled with this, but it's not a problem in my case.

I can imagine that Atheros added this to tighten up security on WLAN's, since the dwl-g650 actually locks in communication with the access point BEFORE the user is logged into Windows.

HOWEVER - although I haven't tested it, I suspect there's a potential conflict for some users. The name "athgina.dll" suggests that this is the atheros version of the standard Windows "MSgina.dll", which is the "Graphical Identification and Authorization" module.

Only one "gina.dll" can be the "main gina.dll" - the one initially pointed to in the registry to control the interface to the WinLogon process. Typically, software companies that want to tighten down security or provide a custom logon process replace MSgina.dll with their own. For example - Symantec's PC Anywhere does this as part of installation. When you uninstall, the registry setting is modified to point your installation back to the standard MSgina.dll.

Now - if it's implemented properly, this really doesn't cause a problem, because "gina" dll's can be linked if they're properly written and installed. So the athgina.dll can pass control to the Symantec gina.dll, and all should be fine (PC anywhere's gina is called "AWgina.dll").

My suggestion: if anyone finds a conflict between "athgina.dll" and "awgina.dll", it's worth uninstalling both programs, installing the Atheros driver first and then follow up with PC Anywhere. Symantec has been messing around with gina's for a long time, and their installation program can properly link their awgina to the currently installed gina.dll.

For anyone interested in the details:
»msdn.microsoft.com/libra ··· gina.asp

Enjoy!
jonazen

jonazen to dcurrey

Premium Member

to dcurrey
Doug -

Static Turbo works fine with my dwl-g650 rev C2. I'm using it in a 3 year old HP N5470 laptop with a 1ghz Athlon processor, running XP Home.

As a matter of fact, I've got my di-624 set up with Static Turbo and pinned to 108 mbps (as opposed to auto). Works beautifully and hasn't missed a beat.
jonazen

jonazen

Premium Member

Re: WinLogon / gina.dll / etc...

It may actually be pretty easy to undo the change to the gina.dll that the Atheros install does. You can, theoretically, simply change the registry setting to point back to the old MSgina.dll instead of the proprietary "athgina.dll".

But there may be things going on under the covers that we don't know about. First thing that comes to mind is the Aegis protocol.

Here's more of a writeup about WinLogon and gina.dll's:
»www.cswl.com/whiteppr/wh ··· a.html#f

In theory, it might be as simple as finding the registry setting, and changing it back to "msgina.dll" and then rebooting. But it may have unknown side-effects. Anyone bold enough to give it a try?
jonazen

jonazen

Premium Member

...and finally, here's the definitive discussion about Winlogo and MSgina.dll, straight from the horse's mouth (it's a Word doc):

»download.microsoft.com/d ··· gina.doc