SMC incompetence

ToxicBunny

ToxicBunny

Oi! Leave me out of this...
Joined
Apr 8, 2006
Messages
141,560
Reaction score
99,451
Location
Crimetown
Ok this is more just a rant than anything else...

SMC have this wonderful product of a Wireless AP that includes a SMC Wireless USB adapter... great.. it'll solve 2 problems I have at home i think...

Get it home, to find that no, BOTH cd's issued with the product are blank (HTF do you manage that)... then i just hop online to get the drivers instead and think all is well.... Nope, they somehow have managed to ALTER the gawddamn USB VID & PID on the device so that nothing recognises it anymore....

How does a company manage this?.. This is a level of fsckup I would never have expected from someone like SMC.
 
Figured since I blasted SMC to some degree that I'd update this post......

Took the whole lot back to the shop, who of course tested it and low and behold it fscking worked....Seems like the CDs only work under XP.. (First I've ever come across that).. so I take the thing home, setup a VM... get the stupid drivers off the CD and it all works now......

What a blerry ballache
 
Note the AP... the USB adapter that came with it..

which of course is NON-standard... so none of their drivers from the web work with the adapter.
 
You are confused. I use the same wireless on both 98 and xp with no problems. Get qualified help before you fup your system. I come across countles computers 'corrupted' by their 'know it all' owners, while they were trying to 'fix things'. The smc wireles router is fairly cheap, offers lots of possibilities for the more experienced user, while having a 'keep it simple' setting for Johnny Bravo and yes, is reliable. What als do you want :D
 
ToxicBunny said:
Note the AP... the USB adapter that came with it..

which of course is NON-standard... so none of their drivers from the web work with the adapter.
Click to expand...

Aah, right. Agreed. On no OS have I had as much trouble getting some wireless cards to work as on Windows. I have Netgear WG511T PCMCIA card that I bought about three years ago. While I've been using this card under Linux without any problems, there are two Windows laptops that it just won't work on (but on others it does). One is my house mate's Acer and the other is my old Compaq PIII - the drivers install OK, but the card just doesn't pick up any networks.

I blame Microsoft partly for this. They took forever to get a wireless infrastructure into their OS, and even then, it sucked. I'm sure if I spend enough time on Google I'll find a quote from Bill Gates or Steve Ballmer saying wireless networking will never catch on. You know, just like the internet and more than 640KB RAM...
 
ToxicBunny said:
Ok this is more just a rant than anything else...

SMC have this wonderful product of a Wireless AP that includes a SMC Wireless USB adapter... great.. it'll solve 2 problems I have at home i think...

Get it home, to find that no, BOTH cd's issued with the product are blank (HTF do you manage that)... then i just hop online to get the drivers instead and think all is well.... Nope, they somehow have managed to ALTER the gawddamn USB VID & PID on the device so that nothing recognises it anymore....

How does a company manage this?.. This is a level of fsckup I would never have expected from someone like SMC.
Click to expand...

SMC are unfortunately not what they were in the 90s.... they are more realtek-ish than 3Com-ish.
 
tomatosarefruit said:
SMC are unfortunately not what they were in the 90s.... they are more realtek-ish than 3Com-ish.
Click to expand...

Uhm, is there really a difference? Many, if not most of the realtek network devices I've installed for clients were powered by RealTek chipsets. At least they were consistent. I've never knew what I was going to get with 3Com - sometimes it was rock solid reliable hardware (like the 3Com Courier modems) and sometimes it was rubbish.
 
I tend to agree with koffiejunkie on this one....

I would take realtek over 3com for the reliability of ALL their products any day of the week.... actually this SMC setup uses a realtek chipset... they've just modified the VID and PID so none of the drivers from the web work (which is a bit of a fsckup if you ask me)
 
ToxicBunny said:
I tend to agree with koffiejunkie on this one....

I would take realtek over 3com for the reliability of ALL their products any day of the week.... actually this SMC setup uses a realtek chipset... they've just modified the VID and PID so none of the drivers from the web work (which is a bit of a fsckup if you ask me)
Click to expand...

Which means that you *have* to use the SMC drivers. I hate it when hardware manufacturers do that. In my old HP laptop I had that exact same problem. They changed the IDs on the wireless card and hard drive, and then did a bios check against their IDs. If you replaced the wireless card, it hung at post with a nicely worded message essentially telling you to fsck yourself. The card was the now popular Broadcom BCM43xx chip, which already worked in Linux, but because they changed that ID, the driver didn't recognise it. So I ordered an HP branded Intel card, that was known to work, and listed on HP's website as compatible with my specific notebook - in fact, it was listed as an accessory for this particular notebook. And I got the same message - it wouldn't even complete POST. What pissed me off even more, is that, because it had the HP label on, that card cost an obscene amount of money - four or five times more than an unbranded one.

The other one, which left me seething with rage, was the hard drive. Again, they changed the ID, and checked against it. The drive was a Seagate 80GB 5400rpm drive. I had a Hitachi 120GB drive which I wanted to use, and this time, if that ID didn't match, it disabled DMA on the drive. WTF??? :mad: Fortunately, I found out, that it only checks for the string "Seagate" - later when I tried a 100GB 7200rpm Seagate disc in it, it worked, but no other brand would.

I will never buy HP again. Never.
 
I'm with you on the HP thing..

But for me this issue of the Drivers is just daft... they don't list the product ANYWHERE on the SMC website... so of course it never gets driver updates...
 
You're lucky it doesnt use an Atheros chipset. I was really surprised how well Realtek wirelss chipsets work, even under XP 64bit. I'd stay far away from SMC as possible, and any others that use Atheros.
 
Cadavre777 said:
You're lucky it doesnt use an Atheros chipset. I was really surprised how well Realtek wirelss chipsets work, even under XP 64bit. I'd stay far away from SMC as possible, and any others that use Atheros.
Click to expand...

Been through the setup of adapters with Atheros chipsets plenty of times. Haven't really had any issues...

1) install ndiswrapper
2) get driver that works in windows
3) ndiswrapper -i ~/path/to/driverfiles.inf
4) depmod -a
5) modprobe ndiswrapper

Done...

I have had one case where I struggled with the WPA encryption, but fiddling with wpa-supplicant's settings fixed that one-time.
 
koffiejunkie said:
Uhm, is there really a difference? Many, if not most of the realtek network devices I've installed for clients were powered by RealTek chipsets. At least they were consistent. I've never knew what I was going to get with 3Com - sometimes it was rock solid reliable hardware (like the 3Com Courier modems) and sometimes it was rubbish.
Click to expand...

Maybe it's my age showing. I was using an old comparison - in the days of ISA and manual configuration, SMC was a good brand... as was 3COM... hence the comparison. I understand that Realtek have taken the market because of their open support and the proliferation of their chipset, but not long ago you were asking for trouble with a LAN full of realtek cards... they were just very buggy. There was even software that wouldn't work with certain chipsets... all that has changed I'm sure... although things are more hit and miss these days than before - at least you knew what worked back then and could identify bugs clearly.
 
koffiejunkie said:
Uhm, is there really a difference? Many, if not most of the realtek network devices I've installed for clients were powered by RealTek chipsets.
Click to expand...

I meant to say most of the SMC network devices I've installed were powered by Realtek chipsets.

Cadavre777 said:
I'd stay far away from SMC as possible, and any others that use Atheros.
Click to expand...

What problems have you had with Atheros? They've been some of the best, most stable I've used. Also one of the few that has a native linux driver and doesn't require you to dick around with the firmware.

sn3rd said:
Been through the setup of adapters with Atheros chipsets plenty of times. Haven't really had any issues...

1) install ndiswrapper
Click to expand...

Why not use the madwifi driver?
 
Cadavre777 said:
You're lucky it doesnt use an Atheros chipset. I was really surprised how well Realtek wirelss chipsets work, even under XP 64bit. I'd stay far away from SMC as possible, and any others that use Atheros.
Click to expand...
Funny that, I've just looked at a Linksys router that uses ATHEROS as a drawcard and printed in bold on the box!
I did notice that they use less memory in the Atheris routers.
 
Cadavre777 said:
You're lucky it doesnt use an Atheros chipset. I was really surprised how well Realtek wirelss chipsets work, even under XP 64bit. I'd stay far away from SMC as possible, and any others that use Atheros.
Click to expand...

Ahteros is the best wireless chipset on the market if you going to buy wireless make sure it's a atheros.
 
The only time I've had issues with Atheros under Linux is in some laptops where the Manufacturer stupidly implements a soft switch. But that's nothing to do with the wireless chipset.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X