Slinger Client Setup Instructions

To use a Slinger you will need the following hardware and software:

• IKSlingerVersionx.xx
• A real Dish Network or Bell ExpressVu receiver. You can not watch both providers on one receiver.
• A Slinger device per receiver. The receiver can be a dual tuner model like a 322, 522, 525, ViP622 or ViP722 though.
• A ROM102 or 103 BIN file that was married to your receiver's TSOP or you may need to send your receiver out or JTAG it yourself.
• A home router, Dlink's DI-604 or DIR-615 or DI-624 is the best.
• An Internet connection/modem which will have an Ethernet plug to plug your home router in.

What will NOT work or will make your TV freeze like mad:

• A wireless modem (Verizon comes to mind) that has a USB only connector (Slinger will freeze like mad)
• ANY FTA (Viewsat, Pansat, Crapsat) receiver.
• A modem with a built in router which has a NAT (Network Address Translator) enabled. Your modem's internal NAT (if any) has to be disabled and the modem be used in bridge mode.

The Slinger will negotiate a session with your receiver and act as if a subscribe ROM24x card was inserted opening up most if not all the available channels. Will work with any Dishnet or Bell receiver for which you got a married BIN for. A Married BIN is an image that was read off a once married ROM102 or 103 card belonging to the receiver. If you got no such married BIN you can edit your receiver with public numbers if the receiver can be JTAG programmed or if the receiver can't be JTAG-ed it can be sent out for a modification

Setting up a receiver with public numbers

I have extensive how to pages to cover most steps outlined here, clicking the hyperlinks in the text below will take you to those relevant how to pages.

If you got no married BIN for your receiver you will have to edit the TSOP. To do so you need a JTAG Programmer. If your receiver is a  DP301.013 or a DP510 you will first have to do a Vid Mod. You will also need to find a public TSOP in the TSOP Bank or you need to edit your TSOP with the public numbers manually. When looking for a public TSOP in the TSOP bank make sure it matches your receiver's Build Config. To find out what your receiver's firmware's build is (Build Config) open your receiver and look on the motherboard. It will have a small white sticker on it with 4 letters/numbers.  For 301 receivers it is something like DAHA, DASA, DANA or similar.  If you find an already modded TSOP download it and follow the Restore the Full TSOP How to. If you found no such TSOP you will have to read your current TSOP then use Flashedit32 to edit your TSOP with the following public numbers:

For Dish Network it is Receiver Number R0018642028 (HEX 011C746C) and Box Key 8CA6A88CFDE2E263
For Bell it is Receiver Number R0045024458 (HEX 02AF04CA) and Box Key FDBF2E56AFFA7264

Once you edited your receiver please make sure it takes the latest firmware update by hooking it up to the satellite cable and inserting an old ROM102 card with the married BIN on it then turning it off with the remote and waiting for it to update. For a list of current firmware versions please visit the Firmware How To.  Alternately if the receiver's firmware is old and you got no Atmega, ROM102 or any other emulator card you can force a firmware update in which case you need no card in the slot. Before you erase any sectors make sure the receiver is working with the TSOP you wrote to it and powers up fine asking for a card. It is important that your receiver's firmware is up to date otherwise it will not recognize the Slinger's interface card or any ROM24x cards for that matter.

STEP 1,
Install both drivers from the Slinger program's Drivers directory. The program will not run without them.
Start the Slinger software and select your receiver model from the drop down lost and if it is for Bell or Dish. Select Application Client then click LOAD SLINGER.

Router and Modem Stuff Important!!!

To properly configure your Slinger and avoid freezing it is very important that you not only program the Slinger but also your home router. The setup below is the one you want.

Since covering all possible routers' configuration would take up a lot of space and energy I will show you how to configure a DIR-615 D-Link wireless router that I found works perfect with the Slingers. Other recommended routers are the DI-604 and DI-624 also from D-Link. You need to find out if your router gets a real IP address from your ISP or is it put behind a firewall that is built into your modem and your router gets an IP address in a private range issued by your modem.

Open a command prompt (in Start/Run type cmd and Enter) and type ipconfig then Enter

Look at the results displayed and find your IP address. On my computer it looks like this:
 IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.101
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1

I now know that my router is at http://192.168.0.1

I will now log in to my router's admin panel at the above link.

Look at your router's manual for login ID and password but the most common variations are:
Login: Admin or Administrator
Pass: leave empty or admin or password or admin123 depending on your router.
 

Once logged in go to the status page of your router. Mine looks like this, and find the WAN and LAN data.
 

If your find your WAN IP address is within the range of:
10.0.0.0 through 10.255.255.255 OR
172.16.0.0 through 172.31.255.255 OR
192.168.0.0 through 192.168.255.255
it means you already are behind a Network Address Translator (NAT) which is not good. You want real Internet IP address on the WAN (Wide Area Network) side of your router. If you get something like 192.168.1.1 or anything in the above range it is because your modem also has a NAT built in. If you try to run your Slinger without doing anything about the modem it will freeze like Father Winter. You must now configure your modem to be a dumb bridge. Please search the Internet or ask your ISP how to configure your modem as a bridge. Explain to your ISP that you want to use your own Home Router and have services that need to be accessed from the Internet. If you are behind two NATs stuff that must pass will be blocked. Once your modem s just a bridge you will get a real IP on your router's WAN side. Take note, I deleted some digits from my screen shot, but as you can see my WAN IP starts with 24 which is a real IP not one from the private range.

STEP2,
Now that we know our LAN's MAC address, our Default Gateway IP and the ISP 's DNS server we can configure the Slinger. I found it is best to not rely on the Slinger to properly discover my network so if it is the first time you program it you will be advised to follow my lead even if it seems redundant and unnecessary to do all these steps.

a, On the network page in the Slinger software select Static from the drop down menu, click Read in the LAN Configuration to read your Slinger's MAC address (will need it later) and click Read in the Port Configuration area to see what Destination Port is hard coded into your Slinger.
b, Enter the very same port number in the Source Port field you see shown in the Destination Port field. This is good practice in case you have several Slingers on your network to make sure they don't conflict with each other. In this case it was 11014 and click Write in the Port Configuration area.
c, In the Static IP Configuration area, in IP address enter one that is on your local network. I like to use 50 and since my LAN is the 192.168.0.0 network I will enter 192.168.0.50 there. If your LAN is the 192.168.1.0 network then of course you'd enter 192.168.1.50 in the IP field. Depends on what network your router is configured with.
d, I enter the Subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 in the Subnet field as you can see on my router's status page that is my LAN's Subnet Mask.
e, The gateway IP is 192.168.0.1 for my LAN so I enter that next.
f, My Gateway MAC address (the LAN side MAC since that is where your Slinger connects) is 00:24:xx:xx:56:1d as you can see above. The Slinger likes this with space between every two digits not : so I enter it as 00 24 xx xx 56 1d
g, My primary DNS server's IP is 24.xxx.144.2xx (this one you need to use from the WAN side)

After you entered all this click WRITE UNDER THE STATIC CONFIGURATION area.

Once it finishes change the Static back to Automatic in the LAN Configuration area and click Write next to it.

Without this the Slingers sometime have issues figuring out what network they are on and what DHCP server they should be asking an IP address for. Dumb really.

Step 3,
You took note of your Slinger's MAC address right? Mine in this case was 00 54 98 b8 3f c5. We now go back to my router and set up a DHCP reservation for the Slinger. The idiots at D-Link used to call it Static DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) on older routers, so we will set up a static dynamic thing. Go to the SETUP/NETWORK SETTINGS page in the Router's admin panel and find the DHCP Reservation option on the bottom. Fill it out with the Slinger's IP we always want it to have and its MAC address then click Save.

By doing this every time you restart the Slinger it is always assigned the same IP address of 192.168.0.50. It is important because we will now put the Slinger's IP into a DMZ (Demilitarized Zone) where the router will do no filtering between the Internet and your Slinger.
 

Step 4,
We now go to the ADVANCED/FIREWALL SETTINGS page in the router's admin and configure IP 192.168.0.50 to b in the DMZ on the bottom of the page ...

...then Save Settings on the top of the page.

Step 5,
Now go to the ADVANCED/PORT FORWARDING page and forward all incoming packets on your Slinger's listen port to your Slinger's IP address. If you recall I used the same source and destination ports of 11014 for my Slinger which now has the IP of 192.168.0.50 so I entered those numbers and then click Save Settings. On some routers you can select TCP or UDP or Both, you want Both TCP and UDP to be forwarded.

We are done with the Router you can close the browser.

Step6,
Go to the IKS Channels page in the Slinger software and Click the Scan Channels button twice with about 30 seconds between clicks to see the available public channels for Dish and Bell. Or you can just manually enter
Channel 100-00113 for Dishnet or Channel 100-00082 for Bell. This Channel thing is like a login ID nothing more.

For password enter 123456789 for either Bell or Dish and click the Write button.

Step 7,
Go to the BIN editor page and click Load Bin and select your married BIN. Since my 301 is edited with public numbers I can use the provided Dish Public Clean ROM102 at rev 103.bn102 from the Dumps folder in the IKS software. If your receiver is not cloned to the public numbers but you have a ROM102 or 103 BIN that is married to your receiver you need to write that BIN to the Slinger instead of the public BIN. If you have a ROM103 BIN it has an extension of bn103 not bn102 and it will not show up in the list when you select BINs unless you select All Files from the drop down box.

If you want to change the time zone you can enter the two digit code in the Time Zone field then click Patch.
F2 - Newfoundland Standard
F3 - NST/NDT Dynamic Change
E4 - Mountain Standard Time
E5 - MST/MDT Dynamic Change
E9 - CST/CDT Dynamic Change
E8 - Central Standard Time
E0 - Pacific Standard Time
F0 - Atlantic Standard
F1 - AST/ADT Dynamic Change
EC - Eastern Standard Time
ED - EST/EDT Dynamic Change
E1 - PST/PDT Dynamic Change
DC - Alaska Standard Time
DD - AKST/AKDT Dynamic Change
D9 - HAST/HADT Dynamic Change

Since I am in EST and Daylight Savings I edited mine to ED.
Once the BIN has the right time zone click Write and it will be written to you Slinger.

This is it folks. Both your Slinger and your router is now configured.

Step8,
a, Unplug both the USB and power cable from the Slinger.
b, Take the Slinger to your receiver. Hook up the phone cable with the interface card on the other end to the phone socket on the Slinger, plug in the network cable from your Home Router into the RJ45 socket on the Slinger.
c, Turn on the receiver and wait until it is asking you to insert a card. Remember, the receiver must be at the latest firmware. Connect the power to the Slinger. The Slinger will have the LED in the front of it turn red then immediately turn orange and will blink 3 times indicating the Slinger contacted your router, asked and have gotten an IP address from it. After that it will turn solid orange connecting and waiting for the server . After a few seconds the server will reply to the Slinger when the LED will turn green and start blinking. This is when you insert your interface card into the receiver. The receiver will acquire the satellite signal and go through the steps starting up. Finally it will download the guide and reward you with picture. The LED will stay orange for 15 seconds then when a new packet arrives from the server turn green for a second. That is normal.

Troubleshooting.

Of course nothing ever works as easy as claimed. Chances are you will at one time or another encounter problems. Here are a few symptoms and suggestions I myself have observed.

You get 019 error Card not inserted correctly, CAM ID showing S00 0000 0000
I found that if the Slinger did not connect to the server yet and you insert the interface card in the receiver it will give you this error. To avoid this you must wait until the LED blinks green. So remember, power it on wait for 3 orange blinks, wait, when it starts blinking again green that is when you insert the card. If it does not blink green after like 30 seconds or God forbid turns red pull the card out, cycle the power on the Slinger and wait for the green blink. Sometimes take up to 10 tries, I guess at peak times when the server is the busiest.
You will also run into this problem if your Slinger can't receive the packets from the server. It can be caused by a badly configured router, your modem also being a NAT and blocking stuff, an IP conflict on your network, you using a normal phone cable to connect the Slinger to the interface card, messed up interface card, firewall enabled in routers, encrypted NAT (netgear crap routers like that) enabled in routers, server being down, our Internet being down. For best results get a D-Link router, have your setup like mine above, make sure your modem is not also a NAT (is in bridge mode).

You are getting blinking green but you see only header info on the subscription channels and the previews.
Your receiver's firmware is out of date or your married BIN has problems and will not negotiate a session with he receiver properly. If you can clone your receiver with the public numbers and use the provided public BIN. Make sure you take or force the receiver to take the latest firmware.

You are getting freezing.
Unfortunately with IKS you will always have some freezing. You are after all receiving packets form across the Globe not from your smart card in the card slot. Micro freezes are normal to have. If you are getting very long and frequent freezes at times but not always it maybe network congestion, the server being overloaded or the channel you want to watch not being served with many cards. If you always experience freezing and long ones you must do this:

Get a D-Link router. It does make a huge difference, ask on forums. Don't know why.
Configure your router as I described above. Your router's menu may differ but the idea is the same, DMZ, DHCP reservation and port forward.
Make sure your modem is a bridge, not a NAT device. Avoid wireless modems that have only USB plugs, you need Ethernet (RJ45) out on your modem.
Make sure you are not using a wireless bridge to connect your Slinger to your wireless router. Loads of interference from wireless devices like phones and even your microwave will results in dropped packets which are not resent. If your Slinger is far from the router get a Power Line Inserter and use that. For best results use a plain old Ethernet cable to connect your Slinger to your router.
I found it helps to restart the Slinger every day. For some reason restarting it makes freezing go away for me.

You lose picture or get sever freezing after a long time of use.
If you are not changing channels for more than 4 hours and your receiver is one of the old legacy ones which does not go into standby mode after 3 hours of inactivity the Slinger will go into standby mode and will need to be restarted. To avoid this turn the receiver off with the remote when not watching or tune to a preview channel like 101 on Dishnet. If your Slinger did enter standby mode it will show a red LED or a solid orange one. No green shoots for you. Simply pull the interface card from your receiver, cycle power on the slinger or press the recessed reset button on its side then once you get the green LED blinking insert your interface card back in the receiver.

You can't get the Slinger detected in your computer.
Make sure you installed both drivers from the Slinger program's Drivers folder. You must use a 9V center positive 300mA minimum rated power supply with the Slinger.