Unannounced firmware for DIR-615 rev B

D-link's wireless router DIR-615 is a pretty popular wireless router/access point and has gone through many revisions. Even Unifi uses it as the residential gateway AP with its custom version and rev G firmware (yup a G version does exist but not for retail markets 'cos its specifically tailored for the high-speed fibre connections used in Unifi).

My router is running revision B hardware and on official websites, the latest firmware is 2.25 (or 2.24 depending on which site you visit). Problems with this router is that it can't be flashed with other firmware like DD-WRT, OpenWRT or Tomato etc because of the chipset. It has more advanced capabilities but unfortunately they are locked away because of the firmware. It seems that it may have the same brains as the more featured model DIR-655 and even has the advanced QoS engine which is severely crippled in the firmware.

Searching online, I managed to find this hidden gem for a 2.27 beta firmware for this router from the Russian D-link site here (caution link downloads firmware directly from the FTP site). Specifically, it was tailored for Russian PPPoE, PPTP and LT2P connections as these were added on to the Internet settings section. Surprisingly, it also enabled the full QoS settings for the router and it now enables users to set their own priorities and rules to control traffic. Previously, the only option available was to turn on/off QoS and no other controls. With this, now it is possible to filter out traffic sucking applications like PPS.tv and lower their bandwidth based on either port, IP or destination.

Other new features enabled in this firmware is an option to turn the router into a pure access point mode. This means that it can work as a wireless extender but with a small caveat - it has to remain wired and cannot act as a wireless bridge (i.e. its own WAN/Internet connections still come through the ethernet port and it does not forward wirelessly). What does this actually mean? It basically turns off DHCP and it acts like a wireless switch. Some people may find this useful especially in extending wireless coverage but this means you still need another AP that will provide the authentication/gateway services. If you are looking for a wireless bridge, you still have to look elsewhere or perhaps wait and hope that another firmware release will add this feature on (in theory it is possible, since AP mode exists ... the forwarding part is the only problem here)

Other changes are purely cosmetic - now the status page displays the channels used when running in 802.11N dual radio mode. There is a language option to switch between Spanish (Espanol) and English ... weird 'cos I was expecting Russian language from a Russian firmware.

Drawbacks of this firmware? Scheduling for the wireless radio to turn on/off at specific times seems to crash the router and disable all connections until a cold reset is performed by cycling the power to the router ... so I had this disabled and everything is working fine. This firmware also enables 13 wireless channels and maybe is a violation in certain areas of the world (if so, disable auto channel mapping and manually assign the router to a channel that is allowed in your region)

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NOTE : Use this firmware on your router at your own risk! Although it can work on other region hardware with the same revision, improper use and flashing may brick your router and I will not be responsible for any irreversible damage.

Free time experiment

What happens after you reach the limit of 26 drives in Windows? Seems like nothing .... Windows just stops assigning drive letters and instead assigns them to a null ?? which means they cannot be accessed. Only way to access these 'extra' drives is to do disk mapping to a particular folder.

How did I reach over 26 drives? Simple
C/D/E is primary HDD with 3 partitions
F/G are two internal DVDRW drives
H is a USB thumbdrive
I/J/K/P is internal multi-card reader
L/M/N is external HDD 1
Q/O is external HDD 2
R/S is external DVDRW
T is a virtual floppy
U/V/W/X is external card reader
Z is external HDD 3

Why no A/B? Those are reserved for floppy drives or for floppy emulators.

And yes ... I was bored.

Hmmm

I left alone this for so long ... should start writing something again ... oh wait, I just did ;D

World Cup fever is back ...

I've registered and logged on, so why can't I view online?!? Accounts been verified, TID has been SMS-ed in and confirmed .... why do I still get this error message? *sigh*

IP restrictions ... *sigh*

Facebook often has several good pages/groups that offer stuff like free software and free downloads (e.g. iTunes media) and the latest is actually a good one from Disney Music Moms which is giving away 50 music downloads from a mix of Disney repertoire over 50 days starting 3rd of May (US Time)

Scratch this paragraph ... they fixed it after finding out the problems.
Problem is that some of it is IP restricted ... the post to the download link that is. Seems that the link to the actual download is hidden to Facebook users outside of the US but the download remains active once you have resolved the link (maybe by the time they realise this they might find a way to block that too).

Here are the differences when logged onto Facebook outside US and behind a US proxy. This is the DMM page when logged on using a non-US IP address.

Here is the same page 2 minutes later when hosted through a US-based proxy server ... note the additional highligted section in yellow that contains the link to the actual mp3 download.

But most obvious is the page status when proxied and when not ... one shows the link whilst the other is blank

Wished DMM would have informed fans earlier instead of the hundreds of posts demanding to know where the links are. (Oh ... and don't bother with the links/addresses shown, they expire after 23 hours)

I'm getting bored ... bored of Feseni :(

Another year but the same old story .... but most obvious is the extreme drop in quality and showmanship this year. Of the 8 teams competing this year, none actually stood out as outstanding or showed any improvement.

Excluding the winning group, here are the most glaring problems in each of them.

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Faking a nude pic (or I'm bored and started photoshopping)

Last year someone on FB decided to upload a whole bunch of pics altered using the web service yearbookyourself. The results were less than spectacular but hilarious nonetheless. So few days back when I was bored out of my mind and sick of reading journals, I thought about seeing if a manual effort would produce better results.

My goal - create an incriminating picture about someone based on easily available pictures .... so whats in fashion now other than having your nude pics circulated online?

Step 1: obtain a nude picture to be "sacrificed". Google is SOOOOOOOO good to me here and in the end I decided on the male human form .... don't get any ideas though. I chose male so that more of the *ahem* nude body could be shown. If I went female, then basically I am limited to doing from shoulder up and that wasn't much of a challenge to alter the pic :P

Shown below is the pic I chose, cut (sic) to where I deemed necessary to show modification ... you want the rest of the pic, go Google it or search some porn site you know of (yeah, stop lying about it). Reason - clear body outline so that I can isolate it.

Step 2: Person to "incriminate". Obviously I had to choose a picture that more or less matched the body angle of my sacrificial pic so as I had less work to do - once again Google images to the rescue!! The chosen one here is pretty obvious (the group he comes from rhymes with boogerlay ... btw his pics are really amazing for someone over 40!) and it seemed to fit quite well, heck even the hair was cut off roughly at the same spot!

Problem here is that it was taken intentionally overexposed for a print ad which means one of the pics will have to be adjusted to match (kinda like how yearbookpics changes everything to black and white to simplify matching skin tones)

Step 3: I'm too lazy to document each step. Basically isolate body, cut of head and save as layer. Isolate head, cut of body and set as secondary layer. Merge, blend, resize, desaturate, brighten, feather smudge+smudge+smudge and several artsy-fartsy filters to hide any imperfections and here's the result. Not too bad for less than 10 minutes of digital manipulation .... a definite improvement over the effort from yearbook pics. If I wanted to, I probably could have replaced the background to the original but you get the general idea.
Kinda makes you wonder how many images you see in media are actually real and not touched-up

NOTE: This example and the people chosen/pics used were NOT intended to defame or insult the individuals. All content was obtained through Google images and used without permissions from respective parties. Apologies to all affected.

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Waaaay overproduced and over the top = EPIC FAIL

Although I laud their efforts to promote relief to the Haiti nation, but me thinks (sic) that the new version of "We Are The World 25" pales in comparison by a VERY VERY large margin with the original eventhough it is 25 years old.

Yes there are countless of celebrities in the song but not all can sing (why the heck is that Bieber kid in there? was he even born when MJ recorded the first version? why does he get top billing?). The song has been heavily auto-tuned and produced with what seems like an overdoes of reverb and echo ... turn it up loud enough on headphones and it borders on getting nauseating with the phasing. And whats with the need to mention "Academy award" director the the music video? The final video looks like it could possibly have been produced using Windows Movie Maker with the footage taken off CNN or some other news broadcast.

Good points? The new sections and rap bits added a welcome update to the song. Inserting post recordings of MJ singing bits of the song is also a cool tribute to the King of Pop but other than that the song is pretty forgettable. Too bad .... look for some other avenue to donate rather than purchasing this piss-poor rendition of a MJ classic.

Whoa ... flashback on MyTown!

Was spring cleaning my room when I collected and sorted through the CDs that were stashed and forgotten and happened upon this oldie album.


I grabbed it from a bargain bin somewhere for 2 ringgit - I think - and totally forgotten about it (it was still shrink wrapped!!). I guess two of the members are more popular now in the band The Script but it was waaaay back then that they were an Irish export called MyTown and had a string of hits "Now That I've Found You", "Body Bumpin" and "Party All Night".

Since playing the CD, I've been rummaging through my harddrives (yes multiple drives - 8 internal/external drives totalling over 2 terabytes) and finally found the saved webcast of their stopover to Malaysia in which they visited KLCC and had a online webchat. I think the whole event was sponsored by Maxis.Net when they were promoting their dial-up services. Since I couldn't find the videos any where, I'm uploading them here just for the fun of it .... yeah, the MTV is totally lost and isn't even available on YouTube?!? Well, it is now :D

Even rarer is this next edited clip of them playing the song live for the webcast. Can't believe I actually downloaded the clip over a 33.6kbps dialup modem - the full video clip weighs in at 60MB!

10 years and this is all?

Posted about this back on 11th October 2008 and today this popped up in my inbox at Hotmail. After 12 years of using Hotmail, a mass generated email thanks is all I get .... *sheesh* ... how bout some free hardware? software?