Scientific Atlanta 8300HD Harmony Remote Close Captioning Sequence

I programmed a closed captioning sequence for my Harmony remote control that will let me toggle the close captioning feature on the SA 8300HD set top PVR cable box on or off. The sequence is simple enough and is as follows:

1. Settings
2. DirectionUp
3. DirectionUP
4. DirectionRight

Then assign it to a button and you're done. Now at times (actually probably every other time) you will have to hit the button twice to get the desired effect because the closed captioning menu on the SA8300 has more than two options (one being On with Mute).

Hope this helps any of you out there looking to quickly switch closed captioning on and off, and have a Logitech Harmony remote!

Windows Vista 64 Freezes When Saving to Network Share Using Ralink RT61 Wireless PCI Adaptor

The new Athlon X2 BE-2400 computer (running Windows Vista Home Premium 64 bit) I had built had a terrible problem- whenever I tried to save a document on a network share the whole computer would freeze. Seeing that I didn't have a spare wireless network adaptor available, I decided to tweak the settings of the one in the machine. It's a CompUSA brand MIMO internal PCI card with an external antenna stand having 3 antennas. Windows Vista shows it as a Ralink RT61 MIMO Wireless LAN Card.

From the Advanced tab of the properties for the card, I turned B/G Protection from On to Off, turned IEEE802.11h from Disabled to Enable, and set TX Burst from Disabled to Enabled. They didn't make any difference.

So I went ahead and bought another wireless card, the Rosewill RNX-G300EX, and little did I know that it was also Ralink, this time Windows Vista indicating it as a Ralink RT61 Turbo. And yep, the same freezing problem. I then booted into Safe Mode with Networking, just to eliminate the possibility of any apps being the culprit, and it still froze the computer when I did a cut and paste into a network share.

I used Vista and tried to do a "Update Driver" but it couldn't find a newer one on the net. I then navigated to the support section of the Ralink site over at:

http://www.ralinktech.com/ralink/Home/Support/Windows.html

and noticed that there were new driver updates as of December 11th, 2008. I downloaded the one that said "PCI/mPCI/CB (RT256x/RT266x)" because the Docs said the drivers were for RT61. The version was updated to 2.1.3. After installation, it still DID NOT WORK- the computer hangs after saving something to a network share. What a piece of junk. Hopefully Ralink will eventually fix this.