Xbox Wireless Adapter Info Leaked 38
cdneng2 writes "Yahoo!/Reuters has an article on the a new official wireless LAN/broadband adapter for the Xbox, details of which were unintentionally leaked on the FCC's website ahead of Microsoft's product unveiling. There's even a
picture of the adapter, which has '54 Mbps' printed on it, in a Digitimes.com article." According to this latter story, "The chipset in the MN-740 wireless adapter appears to be supplied by Atheros Communications, possibly its 2.4GHz AR5002AP-G chip, which supports 802.11b/g. The device also features user-configurable 128-bit WEP (wired equivalent privacy) security."
Why Shouldn't They Make One? (Score:3, Interesting)
Infrastructure vs. Peer mode (Score:4, Interesting)
Errr.....
It *would* be cool! IPv6 force feedback gamepads! Yay!
Re:The new freeway shootouts... (Score:2, Interesting)
Check out the High Speed Highway Halo [bungie.org] video, it's pretty kewl, I'd like to try it sometime.
What is WEP for ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Any thoughts? Is Microsoft planning on mergin this with their Internet TV concept? Will you be emailing via hotmail through your XBox in the years to come?
Re:(sigh) (Score:2, Interesting)
Well, that is a strange view of PCB design. After many years in the industry, I don't share that view. That would imply that everyone who uses chipsets is simply "buying a design."
In the case of a USB wireless adapter, there are some significant translation layer issues with converting the 802.11x layer to USB that are not solved by the Atheros chipset in question. I'm not saying that this problem hasn't already been solved by several other add-on chipsets, but I'm pointing out that there is at least one more layer that must be designed into the board. And this is not performed by outsiders.
In the industry, "buying a design" implies contracting out the entire board design to meet your specs. Buying a chipset to use in your own design is most certainly not "buying a design." It's just common sense system integration.
Look, I'm not saying that MS had a hard time designing this box. And I understand that as chipsets continue to evolve and BiCMOS featuresets expand, PCB designs (generally) get much easier. But PCB layout isn't a pushover by a long shot, and a well designed board can spell the difference between a buggy piece of crap that's in your face all the time and a well-behaved utility that quietly goes about its business.
Are we in agreement there at least? :-)
Xbox wireless adapter MN-740 images (Score:3, Interesting)
We published several Xbox wireless adapter MN-740 images. [geartest.com] Besides the standard photo that you are seeing all over the Web, we also published several close-ups of the internals of Microsoft's 802.11 access point [geartest.com], something that's sure to pique the interest of geeks everywhere.