Many sites say v8 of the WRT-54G routers cannot be flashed with DD-WRT. I have now done this twice and here are simple instructions - these are re-worked from bauer-power who’s post I came across when fearing my first attempt bricked the router. First try on a v8 took me over two hours mostly in Google/ Forums, second time about ten minutes with these steps:
- Go to http://192.168.1.1 (default user/pass is admin/admin)
- Click on Administration tab, then click on Firmware Upgrade. Upload vxworkskillerGv8-v3.bin
- When you see ‘Update is successful, Rebooting….’ unplug the router for 120 seconds
- Plug in router, ping 192.168.1.1 to verify it is still alive
- Run the Linksys Tftp Utility, uploading dd-wrt.v24_micro_wrt54gv8.bin with these settings:
- Press Ugrade. When the green dot appears press the router reset button
- Browse to 192.168.1.1 and see the new firmware (default user/pass is root/admin)
Use IE as Firefox does well with DD-WRT
If you are looking to flash another a non v8 router with DD-WRT I found these links to be the most helpful:
DD-WRT Installation wiki
Client Bridge Example (this is almost 100% correct for V24 firmware - you should have no problems following it)
Also be aware there are version specific firmwares on the dd-wrt website, but it may take you while to find them: Linksys is under the Broadcom (chipset) folder. More than likely a newer builder than I linked to will work with the v8, but I simply wanted another client bridge and have had one running with v24 for two months now.
Afraid to do this ‘hack’? Of the three Linksys routers I’ve flashed none became bricks. Heck they are only $40 now anyway, but if you do brick one it looks they are not too impossible to recover:
Recover from a bad-flash (unbrick a dead router) wiki
So Why did I do this?
This was left to last as the news that we can flash Linksys routers is years old. Still even me -a tech blog addict- was still not 100% sure what a wireless bridge is, and how to link to wireless networks into one seamless network. We need access points in many locations, but are renting so cannot run cat5 everywhere. Yes I could buy custom wireless adapters for the xbox (xbmc), HTPC, NAS drives, PCs and printers but they normally cost $80 or more each and are no where nearly as flexible as a DD-WRT flashed router which has 5 ports. Also the new V8 WRT54G router I bought for my theater room was losing the plot when the PS3 was turned on - I have no idea why but the voip phone etc would all lose their connection. Since being flashed it has been 100% stable.
This is a sample wireless bridge, to the machines it looks like one seamless network:
We now have three WRT54 routers with DD-WRT. One is a primary and two more are client bridges.. one for the xbmc and for my main PC in an office room. They seem to play fine together. The two client bridges have five Ethernet sockets as the wan port was reconfigured by DD-WRT. This is fantastic for many reasons, e.g. when moving large files I can plug a laptop or NAS drives into the same wired network. WiFi is fine for streaming media, but you trying moving a 10GB VirtualPC image or 4GB TV recording over WiFi and you’ll see how much faster/ reliable wired networks are.
Posted by Paul Lockwood as IPTV, Technology at 9:07 AM MST
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Shawn (the ADO Guy) pointed me to Google Reader last Summer and that spelled the end of my Blog Lines use. Both are web based readers, and ideal for reading RSS feeds at various computers. It remembers all feeds, and even what has been read from machine to machine, I used to waste time manually catching up in RSS Bandit when moving between my main PC, the Living Room laptop and work.
Be sure to read in List View, this way you can quickly home in on posts that interest you. I have over 100 feeds and Mr. Index Finger was getting pretty tired with the next button, I expected a whopping blister with the video game like rapid fire of next, next, next!
An irksome issue with online based services is they do not work on most planes, trains or automobiles as just like me they lose the plot when an Internet connection is taken away. If you have not heard, Google Gears is a new Google API that hopes to address this. So far Google Reader is the only application I know of to use Google Gears, and it does not support images yet. Interestingly Google Gears was a project conceived in an employees ‘20% work on what you like time’. Please, please let someone else’s 20% now be looking at hooking up Gmail and Google Docs and Spreadsheets - these simplified my life albeit with another increased dependence on the Internet.
Posted by Paul Lockwood as Technology at 4:23 PM MST
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Why was I not aware of this? It is a free quarterly print/web publication, after scanning the back issues it looks more useful than the MSDN Magazine is lately:
Sign up here: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/arcjournal/
PDFs are there too; I just put all the issues on my thumb drive ready for the next Atlantic flight.
Posted by Paul Lockwood as Technology at 12:37 PM MST
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This should be fun a night, I will kick off with a light hearted look at Cruise Control - it is amazing how many projects still do not use Continuous Integration. My plan is take demos and a few slides - knowing the Architect Group the audience will soon be talking more than me ;)
Next I will give a more formal presentation on Software Estimation - it will be a little dry, but I expect people in the room will liven it up with amusing tales from the field. We all have tales to tell of estimates which went awry.
The Architects group is really meant for Architects and CTOs with 10+ years experience. Even are you not an Architect (yet!) come along this month and enjoy these basic topics. Be aware that most regulars will call out any BS from presenters, I fully expect to be challenged and hope to learn a lot from other attendees.
The Atlanta IASA website is http://www.iasahome.org/web/atlanta.
We meet at Matrix in Dunwoody:
May 9 - 6:30pm to 8:30pm
Matrix (on the top floor)
115 Perimeter Center Place NE
Suite 250
Atlanta, GA 30346
Click here for a Google Map
The office is secure so if you are late knock on the window to the left of the door and someone will let you in.
Posted by Paul Lockwood as Atlanta, Presentations, Tech Events, Technology at 12:45 PM MST
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Like many busy people I used to politely decline requests to join LinkedIn - a social networking website for professionals. A few weeks ago I finally gave it a try and on uploading my Gmail contacts a whopping 70+ people I knew were already in LinkedIn, wow it has really taken off! Check out my shiny new LinkedIn profile here:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/PaulLockwood
What are the main benefits I see from the site? Luckily I have never have trouble finding contracts, but every so often I find myself working for really bad managers - incompetents seem to cluster, why is that? With LinkedIn I hope to avoid making such mistakes ever again:
LinkedIn should enable us to observe any company’s rate of turnover, especially to discover if competent senior developers are leaving in droves or only staying for a few months. As more and more people joined LinkedIn it will become pretty easy to contact someone who used to have the job you are interviewing for - what better way to get to the 411 on why they left than ask the individual themselves?
One thing I have found is that not every member responds to an invite immediately. After three weeks I sent a reminders to the few stragglers and all but one responded within the day - perhaps they missed the first ‘bulk request’ due to spam filters? Whatever the reason don’t forget than you can easily resend an invitation to an existing member.
Posted by Paul Lockwood as Technology at 6:16 PM MST
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Steve Gibson of GRC fame spits out another useful tool:
It simply displays if some newer hardware features are available on your PC. The screen-shot is verification that the 64bit PC I built almost three years does support DEP.
DEP: Prevents buffer overflows in hardware - this a very big deal. Of course the operation system must support DEP too. Which versions of Windows support it is unclear, but 64bit Vista and XP should support it. Hopefully Steve Gibson will extend his utility to test DEP with an actual buffer overflow
Hardware Vitalization: Hardware support for running Virtual Machines - they should run with no speed degradation
You can see all of Steve’s free utilities at his circa-1995 website:
http://www.grc.com/freepopular.htm
After a period of dumbing down his Security Now podcast is again one I highly recommend:
http://www.grc.com/SecurityNow.htm
Posted by Paul Lockwood as Podcasts, Technology at 1:58 AM MST
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When re-hosting this blog I decided to go with an engine that published plain-jane html. The main reasons are:
. Simplicity of hosting
. Speed of pages to appear (i.e. no ASP.Net engine to ‘warm up’)
. Should be simple to migrate to another engine in the future
Unfortunately I decided that Linux is a simpler and faster choice than windows. I say unfortunately because it appears Apache on Linux is case sensitive, i.e. Index.html is different from index.html.
This means there are few dead-links on this site right now, and they will have to stay that way until I return from vacation. Probably I’ll swap back to IIS hosting. Anyone else who looking to move their blog don’t make the same mistake!
Posted by Paul Lockwood as Technology at 8:52 AM MST
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Episode nine
of Steve Gibson’s Security Now podcast covered
Rootkits - I thought I knew what a root kit is but was wrong. As always Steve’s podcast
starts out very basic, but the latter halves normally teach someone of my level a
few nuggets. This week is no exception, I learned that to be infected by rootkit technology
means your operating system has been compromised, and as yet AdAware and cannot help.
You can listen to the podcast or
Google for more information on Rootkits, but the most important point is that SysInternals
have the only tool that can help.
SysInternals
Root Kit Detectors will read your file system and registry without using
high level OS calls and compare the results to those when using OS calls. Any differences
indicate an OS call has been intercepted.
Get the free
tool here: http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/RootkitRevealer.html
Security Now is here: http://www.grc.com/securitynow.htm
Posted by Paul Lockwood as Podcasts, Technology at 4:50 PM MST
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Boring post I know: Today I used an Acer
AL1914 19″ LCD Monitor with a DVI compatible video card (it was purchased for those
contracts where contractors are provided whatever hardware was about to be sat on
the curb). The difference is night and day - as one may expect
you loose controls to set focus etc . If you are looking to buy a low
end LCD go with DVI - the expensive LCD Monitors probably all have
decent ADC components but this sub-$300 19″ unit’s ADC is pretty lousy.
Arriving back from Austria I can use my own hardware in the Atlanta office and am
hence happy as Larry (apart from the workload). When time allows I’ll post more
about the setup in a post on workstation ergonomics, or more poignantly why I have
not had a stiff neck or bad back since 2001 despite having done little but write code
for the last 23 years.
Posted by Paul Lockwood as HDTV, Technology at 5:39 PM MST
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A new build of VS.Net 2005 is there for all us MSDN Subscribers.
Kudos goes to Wallace:
http://weblogs.asp.net/wallym/archive/2004/12/14/300212.aspx
We have DVDs of the last Beta 1 release to give away at Monday’s http://www.atlantamobility.net/
meeting. A few members have complained that they cannot develop mobile apps without
buying an expensive version of VS.Net 2003 - if that’s you grab a VS.Net 2005 preview
DVD from us on Monday.
Posted by Paul Lockwood as Technology at 8:45 PM MST
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