I do very limited tested beforehand. I currently have 1 very helpful tester that is giving me constant feedback, but I post builds after I change something I find worthwhile. I need YOUR FEEDBACK I do not actually run this router on my network, because it's always connected to my laptop getting hacked. Maybe someone should send me one or two more.

I have looked at our bootloader, and it has no method to attempt a failsafe TFTP flash as Broadcom's does. The WRT54G I believe will load a TFTP image from bootloader if kernel is broke without intervention. Our current bootloader will not. If you attempt to start a TFTP transfer, it will try again and again and again indefinitely, thus it will never start the flashed image. I am trying to find solution to this, and the best I can think of now is replacing the bootloader. This is tricky as well and may produce a real brick requiring a JTAG which I don't have! :(

RECOMMENDED BUILD FOR USE IS BACKFIRE The 2.6 kernel lacks USB and the wifi driver will run your CPU hot and leave you disappointed.

I must give a shoutout to those who have been so generous with their feedback. I hope to add to this list.

• Mayckel (a guy from Curacao) - has tons of these routers and is certainly #1 with feedback. He hacked together a serial cable to help me out (well, and himself with the dozen bricks I helped make).

This is something I would actually finally send to end-users… Still the need to format jffs on first boot, but you can do this now by holding the small RESET button on the back during boot. 10 seconds after power-on should be plenty.

binary: oops i broke it don't flash yet. guess the old NOR map sneaked in again and this won't work after having linksys firmware… :(

Simply connect to LAN port or wifi and configure from http://192.168.1.1 the username is 'root' and the default password is blank.

Basic quick openwrt build. Not much tweaking for our system has yet to be done, as seen from the steps of setup instructions below…

binary: http://wrt.scottn.us/wrtu54g-tm-backfire-b3.bin (ChangeLog)

source: http://wrt.scottn.us/openwrt-backfire-adm8668-r1.tar.gz

1. Flash the router from Linksys web interface.
2. Telnet to 192.168.1.1
3. Set password to enable ssh and disable telnet: passwd
4. SSH to root@192.168.1.1
5. Update opkg: opkg update
6. Install X-WRT: opkg install webif
7. Make web daemon start on bootup: /etc/init.d/uhttpd enable
8. Reboot: reboot

If the SES light (the one on far right) ever turns green, you're not bricked. If it doesn't extinguish tho, the boot script didn't finish… there is a problem with the webflash is that i cannot mark the jffs space was needing to be formatted. so, turn off router and hold the SES button during boot until the SES light turns orange. Set static IP 192.168.1.2 on PC and connect on LAN port. Telnet to 192.168.1.1 and execute “mtd -r erase rootfs_data”, it will reboot afterwards and hopefully work.

opkg.conf to include any packages i have made available (wifi drivers, duh) plus x-wrt !

opkg.conf

  src/gz xwrt http://downloads.x-wrt.org/xwrt/backfire/10.03/brcm-2.4/packages/
  src adm8668 http://wrt.scottn.us/ipkg
  dest root /
  dest ram /tmp
  lists_dir ext /var/opkg-lists
  option overlay_root /overlay
  arch adm8668 5
  arch brcm-2.4 10
  arch all 20

At least from my experience, USB1.1 is reliable, while USB2.0 storage just … breaks/corrupts stuff. Also, since EHCI is made in the kernel, we must override dependency of kmod-usb-core. I did this:

root@OpenWrt:~# opkg install kmod-scsi-core
root@OpenWrt:~# opkg install --nodeps kmod-usb-storage
Installing kmod-usb-storage (2.4.37.9-1) to root...
Downloading http://downloads.openwrt.org/backfire/10.03/brcm-2.4/packages/kmod-usb-storage_2.4.37.9-1_brcm-2.4.ipk.
Configuring kmod-usb-storage.
Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
usb.c: registered new driver usb-storage
scsi0 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
  Vendor: Generic   Model: STORAGE DEVICE    Rev: 9451
  Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Attached scsi removable disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0

There it is! Just make sure it's a USB1.1-only hub for great success. I found a Belkin F5U021 after *much* searching on eBay/interwebs. They are hard to come by nowadays. :(

These require nls_base which should have been made in the kernel but was not due to incorrect kernel config by default. I will fix this in next build, but the workaround is to install it as a module. That module is at http://wrt.scottn.us/nls_base.o and you can place it manually in /lib/modules/ and create a file in /etc/modules.d to autoload it for now.

Since x-wrt adds another repo in /etc/opkg/xwrt.conf you can remove the top line of opkg.conf after you install webif. Alternatively, you can initially add it in /etc/opkg/xwrt.conf …