Front Speaker Upgrade to 1996 Subaru Legacy Outback
After being constantly annoyed by the awful-sounding front speakers in my 1996 Subaru Legacy Outback (the rear speakers had already been replaced), I decided to buy the Polk Audio db6501 component speaker system. I found it on Crutchfield, but I wasn't about to pay $200 for it when it was $110 on SonicElectronix.
The speaker system, being a "component system", includes main speakers (woofers) that go in the traditional speaker spot inside the door, little circular speakers (tweeters) that had to be mounted somewhere on the pillars, dash, or sail panel, and finally the crossovers that separate the audio feed to both the woofer and tweeter.
My dad has done audio mods before (the aforementioned rear speakers), so I waited until this weekend for him to be free.
The entire installation went rather smoothly, and took about 4-5 hours. It began with:
1. Removing the inside door panels. This was relatively simple, just going around the edges of the door with a flathead screwdriver popping out a bunch of clips. I also had to remove a few screws.
After the clips were popped, it was as simple as gently pulling the panels up and off and popping out the power window panels.
I set the panels aside and didn't use them again until I installed the crossover in step 5 and 6.
Door Panels Removed (Click for bigger image)
2. Removing the old woofer. This was as easy as unscrewing them from the mount. That made it easy for the next step.
3. Mounting the new woofer. The new woofer had to be attached to a mount included with the system, which was then attached to the Subaru mount.
Polk Audio Woofer Installed (Click for bigger image)
4. Mounting the tweeters. I decided to surface-mount the tweeter on the door sail panel as shown:
Tweeter installed (Click for bigger image)
5. Feeding all of the wires into the door panel. The previously removed door panels had a storage area, so I drilled a hole into it and fed the wires through it. The crossover will be placed in here. While feeding the wires through, it was easy to snap the door panels back on in the same step.
6. Wiring the crossover. My dad stripped the ends of the wires for the tweeter, woofer, and input and put them into their spots in the crossover.
7. Mounting the crossover. As mentioned previously, the crossover was going to be stored in the door panel's storage area. But they are not supposed to be loose as vibrations can be damaging. So I took some velcro strips and used them to stick the crossover to the side of the storage area in the door panels.
Crossover Installed (Click for bigger image)
Project Complete! (Click for bigger image)
Project complete! My dad and I were surprised how amazingly smoothly it went. And the sound: absolutely awesome. These speakers are well worth the upgrade from the stock audio!
Adding Recessed Wifi Antenna to EEE PC 1000HA
The Inspiration
Quite a long time ago, I upgraded my EEE PC 1000HA wifi card with a nice Atheros 5008 card that supports Backtrack 3, Wireless N, and a third wifi antenna.
Inspired by Vinhtvu2's external wifi adapter on the eeeuser.com forums, I decided to do a similar mod of my own. So I bought the antenna on eBay. Unfortunately, with my small EEE PC case, I didn't want to do the exact same mod as it sticks out too much. And I was afraid to hack away while the warranty was still valid.
So finally, a year and a half later, I was inspired by a random modding blog to try putting in the antenna recessed into the ethernet port.
And it worked fantastically!
The Hardware
The process was tedious (took about 4 hours), but rather simple:
1. Disassemble the entire EEE PC (excluding the LCD screen), which consisted of removing the bottom hatch, the hard drive, RAM, and wireless card, the keyboard, separating the plastic casing, and removing the motherboard and all of the connectors. There are many guides online; that's not what this tutorial is for.
2. Finally, once everything was separated, I had full access to the bottom of the ethernet port. I used a dremel with a cutting head and cleanly cut off the very bottom. I turned the motherboard upside-down and placed the RP-SMA connector down in the port and used Loctite 1-minute instant mixing epoxy. I used a nice amount and it hardened very well; I don't think the connector is going anywhere.
Epoxy (Click for bigger image)
RP-SMA connector inside ethernet jack (click for bigger image)
3. I gently sent the motherboard back into the casing to see how it would fit. There wasn't enough room for the antenna's RJ-SMA connector to fit inside, so I took the motherboard back out and took the dremel to the plastic case and made the hole a bit wider, as you can see in the picture of the final product.
4. I checked to make sure that it fit now. It did! So I put everything back together (putting the ribbon cables for the touchpad and keyboard back in was not fun) and locked it up tight.
5. Nervously, I pushed the power button. It booted up and everything worked - whew! There were a lot of connectors that I was nervous about (I luckily took a picture of the motherboard before I removed it.) With everything working, it was now time for some hands-on testing!
The Results
Antenna (click for bigger image)
Antenna, Netbook closed (click for bigger image)
Antenna Nub Straight (Click for bigger image)
Antenna Nub Side (Click for bigger image)
All of the power results are from testing in Backtrack 3's terminal.
2 internal antennas only: ~25
External antenna only: ~22
External AND internal antennas connected: ~40
So, as you can see, the results are quite good! It was a fun mod, and it was interesting to see the EEE PC internals. The extra signal will be nice sometime when I am in the middle of nowhere on vacation and want to check out my emails! After all, what good is a netbook if you can't get on the 'net?
WolfKing Warrior Gaming Keypad
From the pictures in my post about installing Windows 7, many people were curious as to what the nifty little keyboard was in the leftmost portion of the photos. I had been meaning to do a writeup on it anyways, so I thought it was appropriate timing!
I grew up playing video games on my PC. I'm glad I did! A PC can be so much more powerful, and cheaper in the long run, than a console. But that's a long, drawn-out debate for another day.
So anyway, as I grew up playing Jedi Knight Dark Forces II (awesome game!), I used the arrow keys so that I had access to the numpad and the box above the arrow keys for extra buttons, which I always used for force powers. And therefore, when I got into games that required fewer keys, like Half-Life 2 and Far Cry, I began to get annoyed with using the arrow keys. I always ended up pushing the keyboard clear across the desk because my hands were too close together when I was using the arrow keys and the mouse. I began to regret that I didn't start with the WASD layout, but it just didn't feel right to me.
And then I saw the WolfKing Timberwolf keyboard, a complete keyboard with an extra section on the left, that contained just a set of WASD keys and some surrounding keys. I wanted it so badly from the moment I saw it!
But, as a full keyboard, it was rather expensive and unwieldy. And so I gave up on my dream. But shortly after, I noticed a deal on Dealnews.com for a WolfKing Warrior Gaming Keypad. A light went off in my head: I surely had heard this brand before! I quickly went to the link. Sure enough, it was the WolfKing Timberwolf, minus the keyboard part! And it was cheap! It was more than I could have asked for; I bought it immediately, and awaited with anticipation for it to arrive.
And finally, it did! And it was all that I could have imagined. It has the feel of the arrow keys, but the accessibility and function of the WASD keys. All the keys are beautifully positioned to allow for terrificly ergonomic and efficient button-mashing.
You can see for yourself how the keypad is set up:
WolfKing Warrior
So maybe, if you're a PC gamer like me, you'll make the wise choice to pick one up for yourself! The only con: without sale, it retails at $40 on Amazon.
Installing Windows 7 (Part Two: The Installation)
So getting ready to install was as easy as booting from the Windows 7 Professional CD. As soon as it booted, up came the selection for the settings:
Settings Selection (Click for bigger image)
So, I picked the settings and it asked me to install:
Install Now (Click for bigger image)
Once I chose to install, I was presented with the Windows 7 EULA:
EULA (Click for bigger image)
After I, *ahem*, read the EULA, I was given the options to choose an upgrade from Windows Vista, or a fresh install:
Fresh vs. Old. Hmm, tough decision! (Click for bigger image)
Obviously, I chose the fresh install! A menu came up to let me choose the partition on which I wanted to format and install Windows 7. The installation process began.
The entire installation was 100% complete in about 10 minutes! I was absolutely stunned! It cautioned that it might restart several times, but I never noticed it restart at all. So in no time, the install was complete:
Installation Complete! (Click for bigger image)
Finally, the installer asked for my username and a name for the computer. I entered that information in and, immediately, it went to a screen saying "Preparing your desktop" and logged me on. Now, the beautiful Windows 7!
Windows 7 clean desktop! (Click for bigger image)
And so there you have it! Windows 7 freshly installed!
The updater immediately installed the drivers for my audio, the Nvidia drivers, and everything else essential. It was the best installation I've ever done: all I had to do was install my beloved Google Chrome and Firefox, and a few other programs, and it was up and running. It runs extremely speedily, even seeming faster than Windows XP!
So, unbelievably, that's all there was to it. Leave me comments about anything you want to know and I'll write an article on it; I'm all yours!
Installing Windows 7 (Part One: Goodbye Vista!)
I couldn't wait to get Windows 7 to say goodbye to Vista! My PC has a dual-core 3 Ghz Intel processor and a great video card (I am a gamer, after all!), and Vista has always ran like a slug. Well, that is, if slugs could run, they'd probably be pretty slow!
So anyway, I got Windows 7 through the Microsoft Partner Program, and I've finally gotten time to install it. I'm going to completely overwrite Vista with a fresh install.
I already have multiple partitions: one for Vista, one for XP, and one for Ubuntu (go Linux!), so I'm going to have to restore the dual-boot with Windows 7 and Windows XP so that it launches after Grub. But otherwise, this should hopefully be a smooth-sailing upgrade.
Goodbye Vista! (Click for bigger image)
