So, I finally got my WiFi working at home. I had tried it before but ran into some problems. You see, I already have a wired router hooked up with all sorts of filters and redirects since my websites are run off a server in my closet. I didn’t want to trash that router and redo all of those settings on the wireless router. So I wanted to keep my existing router and just add in the wireless one. That was not easy to figure out.

I finally figured out how to do it today so I am writing it up for myself and any future internet travellers looking for this info. Here is how I did it:

For reference, I have a wired D-link DI-704 (router1) and a wireless D-link DI-524 (router2) but from here on out, I will call them router1 and router2 because the principles here should pertain to any routers (wireless or wired).

router1 was set to have an IP of 192.168.0.1 and was already working fine. The new router2 was also set to have 192.168.0.1 by default so the first thing I had to do was change router2’s address to be something else – I chose 192.168.0.2. You do this in the configuration webpage for your router. Now hook up router2 to router1 by using a crossover cable connected from any of router2’s LAN ports (NOT the WAN port) to any of router1’s LAN ports. This was my first mistake when I tried this before. I connected to router2’s WAN port – don’t do that.

On router2, disable DHCP. On the computer(s) you want to connect to router2 (wirelessly in my case), you have to set them up to have a static IP address. My router1 gives out IPs in the range of 192.168.0.200-192.168.0.205. 202, 203, and 205 were already taken so I assigned the new computer (the laptop using wireless) an IP of 192.168.0.204 (subnet mask 255.255.255.0). On this computer I also set the Default Gateway to be the IP of router1 (192.168.0.1) and also set the DNS server to also be the IP of router1 (192.168.0.1).

That’s it. Of course there are some other steps involved if your router2 is wireless, but those steps are the same regardless of how you hook them up (don’t forget to turn ON encryption!).

Hopefully this will help someone in the future.

Geek Tags: geek, routers, wifi, howto, tutorial

I have an MP3CD-playing stereo in my car – a Jensen MP3310. I got it for ~$125 2 or 3 years ago. I have been using my MP3 CDs in it, but with the advent of podcasting, I have been using my Lexar USB drive with a Lexar Jumpgear and the car stereo’s AUX input to play podcasts off my USB drive. Makes it easy to just delete them after I listen to them.

Today, I saw Best Buy had on sale an MP3CD-playing stereo that also has a USB jack on the front to play MP3s off of USB drives (and it has an AUX input)! I have been saying that somebody should do this for years and now they finally did. So I went to Best Buy to check it out and took a bunch of MP3 CDs and my USB drive filled with MP3s. It played all of them flawlessly except the latest episode of The Bitterest Pill which is at 22Khz frequency – it played that too fast. EVERYTHING else it played perfectly. So I bought it. Price was $99 on sale. Here’s the Best Buy page on it.

I’ll be installing it myself next weekend – too busy this week to do it. It comes with “free installation” but they charge you $25 for the wiring harness and labor. It’s not worth $25 to let them do it. I’ll do it myself.

I’ll post my thoughts and a review once I have installed it and played with it a bit. It’s an “Insignia™ 40W x 4 CD Deck with CD-R/RW/MP3/WMA Playback and Wireless Remote Model: IN-MP101”.

Also, I should be able to use it to play MP3s off of memory cards like SD cards by using my USB card reader. I’ll have to test that out too once it’s installed.

UPDATE: Full review has been posted.

Geek Tags: geek, USB, MP3, MP3s, stereo, car+stereo

This slashdot post was the inspiration for this. Pictures here. (Click image or link for the full set of pictures)

Geek Tags: geek, rap, hiphop, juicebox, funny, humor, comedy