Samsung MagicLan SWL-2610c

Email sent!

Dan, it's ugly...I mean it is functional, but not pretty.

I just used solder to the connector. I believe I could have used an MMCX connector, or at least that is the type of connector that pops up on the internet when I do a search for Magiclan.

Anyway, the antenna is from the end of an old laptop cardbus wifi card. When I broke it open it has two wires that go to it, so I just assumed one was the center conductor and the other the ground plane connector.

It seems to work fine. I superglued the antenna to the end of the magiclan card and wrapped the wires around the end of the solder. I really need to go back and solder them directly to the Magiclan pc board, but need a finer soldering tip than what I am using.

The bad news is that the card stick out over an inch and a half when in use in the CF slot. Haven't tried it in a pcmcia adapter yet. You can see it all here, I tried to blow up the area where I soldered it to, but it got a little fuzzy on the focus....

Still experimenting....would be neat if I could mount an antenna in the lid of my 900C and mount the card internally, even if it meant giving up the pcmcia slot. Maybe a micro switch somewhere to disable power to the card when I'm not using it. I don't use the pcmcia slot for anything else....

CMonex...now you tell me...I think I would have rather gone that route than mess around with what I'm am doing....Rich

Edited by Rich Hawley 2007-10-27 5:24 PM






Attachments
----------------
card.jpg (51KB - 4 downloads)

That would be an advanced mod then
Thanks for the picture.


p.s.
keep on experimenting..

Card received in good condition. Thanks.

Now, my task is to try to make it work on MP900C.

Rich, I sent you a PM, requesting the name of the registry key, because my installation of the driver swld26c did not register the card.

The registry key reads:
UNKNOWN_MANUFACTURER-0000

Edited by CAuser 2007-11-06 1:56 AM

PM sent back to you...

Um, manually creating the registry entry did not help. The driver pointed to by your link did install smoothly, but the driver on MP900C could not drive the card after I entered 'swld26c'. Nothing showed up on the taskbar, network connections and system within the control panel. The other driver is for WM2003/PPC2003.

I guess I have to give up.

If somebody wants to try his/her luck with this card, just pay a few bucks to cover S&H for shipping within the US.

Edited by CAuser 2007-11-09 12:44 PM

pm sent

Just an update, especially for Oski. I just bought a lot of untested Magiclan wifi cards here: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=380048858053&ssPageName=STRK:MEWN:IT&ih=025

I stuck them in my 900C, and as soon as I did that...it froze up. I pulled the card and it unfroze. Then I stuck in the next one...same thing. I figured I got a bad lot for sure. Then I stuck in the 3rd one and it works great. Connects to my home network at "G" speeds. Stuck inthe 4th one and it didn't freeze up, but it didn't work. I could never get a good signal. Finally tried the 5th one and it works great too.

So I ended up with 2 good 802.11G wif cards for $30...not too bad I guess, but 3 of the 5 were bad. I even tried them out on my laptop with a CF adapter using XP drivers....bad there too.

Rich

So, 2610C is not a reliable/consistent product. BTW, the connectors are U.FL type, I believe.

No, I guess not. BTW, for those of you who have a working one, here is a good post on soldering an internal antenna into the card: http://ficara.altervista.org/schemi.php

It is Italian, but you get the idea....each half of the dipole is 33mm long. I tried it on one of my cards and it works fine...

Rich

I have antennas with MMCX connector with a center pin and MMCX receptacle on WiFi cards. The one on 2610C does not look like a MMCX one as I see it. To my knowledge, all notebooks use U.FL connectors to mount internal antennas. BTW, here is a picture of Summit CF WiFi module with 2 U.FL connectors in comparison with the two on 2610C.

Samsung does produce MagicLAN PC cards that use MMCX connectors.

Edited by CAuser 2008-08-12 8:13 PM








Attachments
----------------
Summit.JPG (17KB - 1 downloads)
Samsung.JPG (36KB - 1 downloads)

I wondered what that connector type was... U.FL, eh? Yep, it seems to be the same one alrightie!

Rich

After CAuser told me what type of connector those Magiclan cards use, I went to eBay and bought an antenna in auction 370070773959 for only $7 (that included the shipping).

Well it came in today, and am I pleased. The connectors snaps right onto the Magiclan card, and the wires are long enough for anyone. The short one is 24 inches, and the other is an inch or two longer. But the wires are super small, and the antenna itself if fabricated into a flexible thin material, just like your ribbon cables that connect your LCD to the base of your HPC.

Using Socket's WiFi Companion as a reference, without any antenna at all I was getting about 17% signal strength (don't ask me what they measure it on as I have no idea). Once I hooked up the antenna, the signal strength jumped up to 60%. Depending on whether or not I separated the two antennas, the strength varied between 50% and 60%

Obviously the antenna made a big difference relative to none at all. And my thoroughput of downloading a file and webpages was significantly faster with the antenna versus without. Comparing this to my WPC11 Linksys, I'd estimate it to be about 1/3 again faster.

Probably because I am connecting at G speeds versus 802.11B. Still there is a bottleneck at how fast the MP can process the data it receives via wifi. But with the cpu overclocker at 472mHz, it is pretty sweet.

BTW, I'm back to using Cmonex v2 again

Here is a picture (with insert) showing the companion running and a picture of the antenna. Now that I have an antenna, I am just about ready to finish up my totally internal wifi mod...

Ric







Attachments
----------------
magiclan with antenna.jpg (34KB - 2 downloads)
antenna.jpg (88KB - 2 downloads)

Oh BTW, after installing the driver for the card, I noticed that it wasn't recognized after entering the driver name. Not until after I did a warm reset...then it worked fine from there on in. If you still have your card CAuser, give that a try...

Rich

Edited by Rich Hawley 2008-09-02 5:53 PM