[ale] Unhalfbricking

[Charles Shapiro]

(With Apologies to Fairport Convention )

It is in fact possible to get a console login on a Kuro-Box Pro as
given away this winter at various ALE functions.
You merely have to build a Sparkfun RS232 Level Shifter kit (
http://www.sparkfun.com/products/133 ), solder a 4-pin PCB header onto
the daughterboard as described in the Kuro-Box wiki (
http://www.cyrius.com/debian/orion/buffalo/kuroboxpro/serial.html ),
and connect the shfiter board to the header.  Then you can plug a
really old computer with serial port into the DB9 side of your level
shifter.  Communication params are 115200, 8-N-1 .  The reason for the
level shifter is that the kuro-box is doing serial communications at
3.3v, rather than the RS232 standard of 5-12V.  So you need the level
shifter board to match it up with a PC comm port.  Don't make the
mistake of misunderstanding the preliminary test instructions on the
shifter board kit and thinking it's broken; power for the shifter
comes from the 4-wire side, not the DB9 side.

The console login allows you to log in as root and debug even
'bricked' kuroboxen, since you have full 2-way communication.  I am
currently trying to source more 4-pin male PCB headers; Fry's does not
seem to have them.  Perhaps ACK Radio can help me out on this?

And hey Aaron, I hope you're still holding one or two 'bricked'
Kuro-pros.  I'll be glad to apply this hack and at least see what is
going on in there?  Retail on this thing is, like, $169.  It seems a
shame to throw 'em out just 'cause the ethernet port isn't getting
initted. Put a $50 hard drive in one of these and you have a pretty
dandy little headless linux box.

I've also discovered that the kuro-box actually keeps her static
ethernet parameters in two different places.  That may be why changing
it in only one place stops networking.

-- CHS