SH2ac - Retentions?
 

Has anybody had any luck obtaining the SH2 ac through retentions by paying just the postage? - (same process as the SH2 last year)

Re: SH2ac - Retentions?
 

Why do you want the SHUB2 AC? I bet all your wireless devices aren't AC

Re: SH2ac - Retentions?
 

no, but some will be

Re: SH2ac - Retentions?
 

From what I've read, it's a slight improvement over the existing SH2 (range)

and with an iPhone 6 on the way (supports ac) it's logical.

But regardless, for the sake of a fiver, Id be a fool not to ask - don't fancy shilling out for a expensive AC router.

Re: SH2ac - Retentions?
 

What dose ac mean with the SH2ac?

Re: SH2ac - Retentions?
 

Re: SH2ac - Retentions?
 

Looking at http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/...s/td-p/2477075 trying to get a hold of one of those may indeed be self-destructive right now.

Re: SH2ac - Retentions?
 

Mines been fine but I've swapped out a few with all 5 lights permanently stuck on bright blue and the wps button stuck on bright blue. In fact one was a regular sh2

Simple swap of hub, woukd like to know what causes it.

Re: SH2ac - Retentions?
 

Sounds like that beta test is going well, then.

Re: SH2ac - Retentions?
 

Funny, who was it that said there isn't any need for testing because it was 'just' a wireless chipset change?

Re: SH2ac - Retentions?
 

Sounds like a manufacturing fault if some hardware is affected and some isn't.

---------- Post added at 17:04 ---------- Previous post was at 16:53 ----------

Indeed it seems I reckoned without manufacturing problems from what's basically a PC card change along with some cosmetics.

I got it wrong. Happens to nearly all of us. Lesson learned.

Re: SH2ac - Retentions?
 

It could be a software fault that's doing something to the hardware it shouldn't be

Re: SH2ac - Retentions?
 

It'd affect all SH2ACs if that were the case.

Re: SH2ac - Retentions?
 

Not necessarily, depends what it's doing. It depends on the circumstances of the failures. Could be pushing the hardware too hard during a reboot, for example, which would explain why it isn't killing everything evenly.

Re: SH2ac - Retentions?
 

How do you propose software pushes hardware too hard during a reboot? If a router can't handle hitting 100% utilisation for a while without having a hardware failure that's a manufacturing issue.

Damage during reboot is more likely due to the voltage spike and trough when power is applied. There can be latency before regulators kick in.

There are a very few cases where software can harm hardware, however these usually need the software to go out of its way to damage the hardware or the hardware to have some quite provocative switches available to control it.

The examples that come to mind for me are Stuxnet, though that worked on PLCs operating industrial processes so quite different from a cable modem router, and software that could kill Android devices by messing around with voltage regulation.

I wouldn't have thought the router firmware would have any control at all over low level functions capable of harming hardware, that'd be looked after by whatever is in the motherboard, individual cards, and SoC's ROM/PLA?

If the required buttons and switches are exposed to the router firmware that would be an 'interesting' decision.

Re: SH2ac - Retentions?
 

I had this exact problem with my SH2ac yesterday! Luckily for me i managed to get my old SH2 reactivated Saturday morning and they're sending a new SH2ac out to me.

Re: SH2ac - Retentions?
 

Most devices don't spin up to 100% at reboot, they tend to stay quite underclocked until they're finished initialising, then they ramp up. For all we know, there's a bug causing a clock to get set too high so not 100% but maybe 110%. Pure, utter speculation though

The point I'm ultimately getting at is that I don't think you can rule out software just because of the way the SHUB2AC's are dying. They do all seem to be dying suddenly from the various reports which is a little too consistent for my liking.

Re: SH2ac - Retentions?
 

Or a design issue :P Quite a few laptops these days aren't able to run at full load continuously, often having to throttle down after a few seconds to minutes - though that's slightly different as it causes no damange.

I agree with Ignition here - hardware that can't run at 100% without damaging itself is faulty.

Furthermore, in practice, it actually works the opposite of how you describe at least on x86 and MIPS systems (the latter being common for routers). Most devices actually operate at 100% without being capable of throttling down or underclocking until the higher level OS is loaded. Without the OS, drivers, and CPU governors loaded, by default almost all devices will run at 100% clockspeed. Further, if something crashes during startup, it usually gets stuck at 100% forever as well.

I haven't investigated the SH2 but a lot of routers do in fact expose voltage and CPU controls to the higher level OS, though often you need a patched or modified kernel to access them, as most stock kernels don't have the capability baked in. So yeah, as you say software has to deliberately go a long way out of it's way to cause damage. But it is theoretically possible and some communities of people who deliberately overclock their routers this way. TBH most consumer devices will have some exposed register or I/O pin somewhere that can modify voltages and/or clockspeed arbitrarily but are usually undocumented or unavailable without special modified drivers in the end product.

It's not going to happen by accident though, unless by freak occurrence RAM corruption manages to hit in such a way the kernel governor accidentally adds a '0' on to the end of the clockspeed setting while sending it to the appropriate registers...

Re: SH2ac - Retentions?
 

Not just laptops, but pretty much all tablets and smartphones have that "issue".

I don't disagree with this. I'm saying that it's possible the software is trying to push the hardware harder than it's meant to.

I'm not going to disagree at all here, as I have limited experience with embedded devices. The ones I have dealt with do start off underclocked and spin up as hardware is initialised. In fact, it was because of this very reason that it's possible to glitch an Xbox 360 to run unsigned code. Obviously not the same thing, however.

Either way, hardware or software, enough people are having issues that Virgin needs to sort it.