Foreword
As my wife likes to remind me, I'm an early adopter.
I've bought piles of equipment that litter various
shelves in the basement, home office, and work server closet that
never quite met the promise that caused me to shell out the bucks in
the first place.Rob Flickenger is an early adopter's early adopter:
before the technology has reached the fancy stage in which
it's stuck in a box, wrapped in nice plastic
clothing, and displayed to the masses, Rob has torn it open,
decompiled its innards, and turned every part of it into something
rich and strange.Reading Wireless Hacks gives me a warm feeling
inside, like holding my hands over the vacuum tube in a
pre-transistor radio. The glow of this book illuminates
Rob's intense interest in spreading knowledge about
cool stuff in order to spread more knowledge about the world in
general.A large part of this book is devoted to extending access, whether
it's by range, through antennas, signal strength,
and other combinations of electromagnetic voodoo; or by
priceintroducing us to inexpensive alternatives to commercial
gear or providing ways to take off-the-shelf items and, Julia
Child-like out of the oven, produce serious production equipment; or
by design, showing us ways to configure software to achieve better
results.Back in 1979, when I owned my first computer (an Ohio Scientific,
Inc., C1P running a 6502 processor), I used to be a whiz with a
soldering iron, assembling my own RS232C port and joystick circuitry.
This book takes me back to those days when computing
wasn't about fast chips, but it was about a lot of
digital parts glued together with analog technology, such as wires
and ports.I guarantee that you don't need to master the art of
hot dripping lead to make use of this book. The software tips and
configuration advice for commercial gear is worth the price of
admittance alone. But if you have everor even
nevertouched the electronic heart of a machine before, this
book will reawaken that desire.This book is the crystal radio of the 21st century, and Rob is the
scratchy voice coming out of the receiver, carried over a long
distances, without wires.Glenn Fleishman August 15, 2003 Seattle, WA |
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