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Charles,<br>
<br>
I actually purchased a JTAG cable to unbrick on of my WRT54GL's,
but couldn't seem to get it to work. I found someone had posted a way
to ground connect one of the pins to of the memory chip. Once I did
that, I was able to TFTP a new image over to it and it worked.<br>
<br>
The dd-wrt 24 SP1 seems to be pretty good for now, but I had a
client install of an x86 ITX sized firewall and now I'm pretty much in
love with ITX. I didn't install IPCop over top of the monowall default
install, but it's in my "To-Do" list.<br>
<br>
-Brian<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-signature">
<div style="color: rgb(36, 91, 126); font-size: 11pt;">Brian W. Neu<br>
Principal<br>
Advanced Open Systems, Inc.<br>
<span style="font-style: italic;">Technology Applied for Business</span><br>
404.452.0043 (v) <br>
404.418.6911 (f)
</div>
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<br>
<br>
Charles Shapiro wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:4a89f25f0808180817u56b50a56qaa9e437b7366b48b@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">(Apologies to Sandy Denny)<br>
<br>
Well, I'm pretty stupid. But I have smart friends. I've been
experimenting with radio networking on the Linksys WRT54GL. This is the
Linksys router which allows you to use openwrt ( <a
moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://openwrt.org/" target="_blank"
onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">http://openwrt.org/</a>
)
to do various advanced radio networking tasks. In particular, I want to
have a radio hotspot with an intro page which'll display the first time
you try to use a browser to connect to a site through it, as many
coffee shops have. I managed to
get coova ( <a moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://coova.org/"
target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">http://coova.org/</a>
) loaded on the WRT54GL the first time
without difficulty, but I had some troubles and decided to go back the
the original Linksys firmware to aid in diagnosing them. That's when I
foolishly destroyed the resident kernel, probably by unplugging the
device before it had finished writing the new kernel to its
NVRAM. <br>
<br>
The device still responded to a ping(1) request, but I couldn't ssh(1)
to it or get any web pages off of it. Hence, it was pretty much out of
control, yet not fully bricked. These routers are designed to let
you use tftp to load a clean kernel in this situation. I installed the
Ubunutu Edgy Eft tftp client on my laptop, started the WRT54GL in tftp
server mode by holding down the reset key while cycling the power, and
tried to load a new kernel on it. My client said the transfer worked,
but the new kernel persistently failed to boot -- the power light kept
flashing, the "dmz" light never came on, and I couldn't bring any web
pages up on it.<br>
<br>
Sunday afternoon I went over to Jim's place to hang out and drink
homebrew, and I brought the recalcitrant router and my laptop with me.
We futzed around with it for a while, permanently destroying the
warranty by disassembling it, doing various arcane hardware things
(like, shorting various pins on the board to other pins) to see if we
could figure out my problemo. Much entertainment, and yet no joy.<br>
<br>
Finally, it was Jim Kinney who noticed that my tftp client had a
"binary" mode, but it was not the default. We switched the client to
binary, did the "hold down reset key and power on" thing, and then
transferred a VALID kernel onto it. The machine proceeded to write the
kernel to NVRAM, boot, display a steady power light and a steady "DMZ"
light, and display the linksys configuration page to my browser. Then
I turned it off
and put it aside.<br>
<br>
Moral of the story: Make sure you're transferring binary files in
binary mode (d'OH!). <br>
<br>
-- CHS<br>
<br>
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