Went to the RV show today, we might end up buying a custom build on a Ford Transit chassis. It's a 3 month build but they are now booked 13 months out so who knows if we follow through with it. I will post links later on the manufacture.
Went to the RV show today, we might end up buying a custom build on a Ford Transit chassis. It's a 3 month build but they are now booked 13 months out so who knows if we follow through with it. I will post links later on the manufacture.
Build Date: 09/26/06
Delivered Date: 10/13/06
709 out of 2694 Convertibles
44 out of 151 Tungsten Grey Convertibles
The happiest people don't have the best of everything, they just make the best of everything they have.
"It is not about how much money you make. The question is are you educated enough to KEEP it."
Fixed my laptop. This happened over the past couple of weeks or so. Took a while to zero in on it.
My laptop started having WiFi connectivity issues. The network would just "drop" and the globe thing replaced the antenna thingie on the status bar. Most often it would come back after a minute or less. Sometimes not at all. I'd reboot and it would come back. Eventually over a few week or so I found if I went to the device manager and disabled the device and re-enabled it that it would start working again.
Symptoms also included huge stuttering of scrolling and video playback including sound would chatter if there was some. It happened for a few seconds before the network dropped.
It happened a few times starting about two weeks ago and then in the past week became more frequent. By then I'd found if I disabled the device I could get it back without the reboot disruption so I set about trying to find root cause....
First I suspected the TP-Link router. So I disabled it and reverted to the low bandwidth version from the DSL modem. 2.4GHz only. That didn't fix it, although it did seem to get better, so I turned back on 5ghz router and went to each of the three bands (2.4Ghz, 5G low channels, 5G high channels) individually. No change. This pretty much precludes taht the cause is any channel sensitivity or external interference.
On the laptop I totally removed all wifi software from Lenovo. The latest driver from Intel is the same as the Lenovo so I didn't bother there. That left the system with the Windows default driver which is way down rev from the intel version (but which Windows tried to pick up from Windows Update so I know it's the right one). The base Windows driver was also better - once every hour or so vs. many per hour before. Still this never happened before...
I removed and re-seated the WiFi card including antennas (boy those connections are tiny and not compatible with the bear paw hands I have). No change...
Meanwhile, I started considering hardware... This laptop is now over 5 years old - it works great, no reason to replace it - so the WiFi card is no longer in production. So I thought I'd find the newest flavor. Find out on line that Lenovo has "white listed" the card and new ones won't work without a hacked BIOS which I'm not in to. Searched for the original - Intel 7260 - and found them on Amazon and Ebay. I much prefer Amazon since you can almost always return stuff. Ordered it for about $15 Prime shipping got it Thursday.
Swapped the card and all is well...
Things also seem like they are a little "crisper" than before. Note in my experience with hard drives is that when things "stutter" it is often a sign of what we call an "interrupt flood". What I suspect was happening was that the WiFi card was causing physical connections to fail (ie, the PCI Express link) and resetting the card caused it to get sane for a while. I wasn't losing the WiFi network, the card was dropping out and since Windows considers the loss of a serial link to be a recoverable event -- we started this with SATA and Microsoft and convinced them that the errors on serial link are EXPECTED and that they should build in a robust tiered error recovery and they expanded this to PCI Express. In essence, all serial devices become hot swappable since the ultimate failure is "disassociate the hardware and start it over again" which is what happens in hot swap. Today Windows is fairly tolerant of misbehaving serially connected devices.
It took about two weeks. I'm sure that if this had been at work the IT guys would have first reintalled Windows from scratch and finally simply replaced the whole laptop...
PS. Windows really wants to reduce power. They are so stupid that they think that saving power while connected to AC is a good idea. Your WiFi performance will improve (I even suspect this applies to desktop systems too) if you:
1. Use the device manager/Network adapters/your adapter, open to properties and select power management tab and disable "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power".
2. In the Power Options control panel, select "Change plan settings"/Change advanced power settings" (opens "Power Options" pane), select Wireless Adapter Settings and select "Maximum Performance" for both On Battery and Plugged In.
Cheers.
Tony
Nothing here yet.
Originally Posted by Highwayman
I watch people building their Transits up on the FordTransitUSA forum all the time.
We just bought something bigger.
.
Cool!
fyi, Ford Transits are now orderable w/4WD ...less than 1" additional ride height (which tradesmen like and off-roaders hate -lol)
68fastback™ ;-)
“When you tear out a man’s tongue you are not proving him a liar, you’re only telling the world that you fear what he might say” -- George R. R. Martin
MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, AGAIN! .
Veritas vos Luberabit(the truth will set you free)
Funny that you should mention that, the standard chassis this company uses is AWD.
Cool!
fyi, Ford Transits are now orderable w/4WD ...less than 1" additional ride height (which tradesmen like and off-roaders hate -lol)
Build Date: 09/26/06
Delivered Date: 10/13/06
709 out of 2694 Convertibles
44 out of 151 Tungsten Grey Convertibles
The happiest people don't have the best of everything, they just make the best of everything they have.
"It is not about how much money you make. The question is are you educated enough to KEEP it."
Cool. Can’t wait to see what you’re considering! It’s such a great way to travel.
68fastback™ ;-)
“When you tear out a man’s tongue you are not proving him a liar, you’re only telling the world that you fear what he might say” -- George R. R. Martin
MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, AGAIN! .
Veritas vos Luberabit(the truth will set you free)
I am letting Teresa teeter back and forth on this and waiting for her to make or not make a decision. $200k is a major investment that I don't think is worth it.
Build Date: 09/26/06
Delivered Date: 10/13/06
709 out of 2694 Convertibles
44 out of 151 Tungsten Grey Convertibles
The happiest people don't have the best of everything, they just make the best of everything they have.
"It is not about how much money you make. The question is are you educated enough to KEEP it."
That sounds like a really well-equipped one!Smart to let Teresa decide. Wine chiller required!
---
I know it's not '78 any more, but for a frame-of-reference, my high-clearance, go-anywhere 460/C6 4x4 Quadravan camper was $9,980 for new E250 converted by Quadravan, then another almost $4K to fully outfit it -- including a custom paint job, full pop-up roof, moon-roof over the front, big windows flanking fold-down bench-to-double-bed, sink, refrig, closet, 4x captain's chairs, fully carpeted, 4-channel sound system, etc.
68fastback™ ;-)
“When you tear out a man’s tongue you are not proving him a liar, you’re only telling the world that you fear what he might say” -- George R. R. Martin
MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, AGAIN! .
Veritas vos Luberabit(the truth will set you free)
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How do you spend $200K on a transit? :(
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