IntroductionDSL-50X is a utility for showing you detailed information about the status of the D-Link series of combination ADSL modems and routers. It retrieves its information directly from the router.
The utility has been tested with both the first and second hardware generations of the DSL-500 (modem/router) and DSL-504 (modem/router/4-port 10/100 switch) ADSL routers. It has also been reported that most functions work with the DSL-604+ wireless ADSL router.
In early 2004 D-Link introduced a new range of DSL-50X modem/routers which were designated the DSL-500G and DSL-504G models. These devices use a different hardware chipset, different firmware and a different web interface. They are not compatible with the DSL50X Gen-I or Gen-II devices.
The author of the DSL-50X utility is Trevor B Roydhouse BJuris, LLB (UNSW 1982), LLM (UNSW 2002) who is an IT Consultant and Solicitor of the NSW Supreme Court and currently employed by the Australasian Legal Information Institute (www.austlii.edu.au) as a system developer.
The Windows version of the DSL-50X Utility was programmed in Object Oriented Pascal using Borland Software Corporation's Delphi 7 (Professional Edition) RAD programming environment under Windows 2000.
The Linux/FreeBSD version of the DSL-50X Utility was ported from the Windows VCL to the cross-platform CLX using Kylix 3 (Professional Edition) RAD programming environment under RedHat Linux 7.3. The whole process took less than two hours for the first working version, losing only a few Windows components in the process (combined label/edit boxes, third party directory chooser, and animated tray icon). Very impressive!
The SNMP routines are implemented using the freeware Synapse Synchronous Socket Library for Delphi and Kylix by Lukas Gebauer et al.
The Check web for update... routine was adapted from Corbin Dunn's source code at Borland's Code Central.
The icons were created using the Borland Image Editor v3 which ships with Delphi 7.
The Microsoft Windows Installer Service (MSI) installation for Windows was created using the limited version InstallShield Express which ships with Delphi 7.
The Windows help file was authored in Microsoft Word 2002 and processed with the Microsoft Help Workshop v4.03 which ships with Delphi 7.
The Linux/FreeBSD help was then converted to HTML from Windows Help format using Microsoft HTMLHelp, before being extensively hand-edited in the ubiquitous Unix editor vi.