…aka “Two hours I’ll not get back, but it felt great to revive my device and not have to buy a new one”
So, I have been looking at Talisman firmware from Sveasoft for my Linksys WRT54G v1.0 and decided to change from the Linksys v3.03.6. Swell. I subscribe ($20/year) so that I could get the latest Talisman firmware. After a bit of research I began my endeavour last night – I go to the download page where it asks for the MAC of my LAN connection on my WRT54G – ok, I put that in and it builds the firmware image on the fly for me. I download it.
(btw, I am plugged straight in to one of the four ports on the WRT54G, and have disabled my wi-fi (as doing firmware upgrades over wi-fi can brick the thing, but I’ll violate this rule later…)). At this point I have the .bin file and I bring up the management page on my Linksys and navigate to the firmware upgrade page and proceed to point it to the newly download .bin file. I do and with great confidence I click the “Upgrade” button. After two little bars of progress, I see “Upgrade Failed”. Joy. My WRT54G seems unharmed at this point so we’re at net 0.
At this point, I decide that it may be a better approach to move Alchemy v1.0 v2.37.6.8sv to start with and then to Talisman. Yep, worked like a charm. The device is working great, and now I’m excited to move to Talisman so I navigate the upgrade firmware page again and repeat the process, this time pointing to the Talisman .bin file. It said it was successful; however, it seems as things went not so good. I manually rebooted the router and to my disappointment I see a steady (red) diag light. Uh-oh!
At this point, I wonder if I “bricked” it. I decided to try a slow reset sequence (hold the reset button for 30 seconds, unplug it, continue holding the reset button for another 30 seconds, plug it back in and release the reset button). No dice. I do it again… and a third time. Nope (this worked for me on another Linksys model that I thought I had bricked). Alrighty, I bricked my WRT54G. Damn! [sigh] Time to find a solution, so I hit the forums on http://www.linksysinfo.org and http://www.wrt54g.com .
Ok, it seems as though the solution involves voiding the warranty and getting physical with it. Here’s the solution: http://voidmain.is-a-geek.net/redhat/wrt54g_revival.html Note that his photos depict a v1.1 WRT54G, and I have a v1.0 model. This is an important difference. v1.0 devices have a mini-PCI card(see photo below) and a not-so-plainly-labelled flash chip. (oh yeah, I took the photo with my SMT5600 and the lighting in my basement isn’t real great)
The flash chip is the non-labelled chip hiding under the inside-corner of that mini-PCI card – a fact I was alterted to via this post.
So, I followed the instructions (using a paper clip to do the shorting) and, by observation of the diag light (fast-blinking, then slow) it seemed to be working. I manually TFTP’d the Alchemy 1.0 .bin file over.. it timed out. Hmm… do it again and another timeout. Hmmm. I TFTP over the Linksys firmware – good to go! … almost. All seems well at this point, but thorough testing showed that I could only access the management software via Wi-Fi (apparantly after I TFTP’d the new .bin and rebooted it, the four-port switch (LAN ports) ceased functioning) – woohoo. :-/ (fwiw, I used the TFTP utility built into WinXP – I find the one provided by Linksys to be crap)
Taking stock of the situation reveals that I have “unbricked” my WRT54G and re-applied the Linksys firmware; however, none of the LAN ports work (but Wi-Fi is good). More research reveals that “sometimes” the routers can be “picky” about what firmware was on them previously and, as such, prevent some things from functioning correctly. Um, ok. That point in mind, I decided to put on the Alchemy firmware. But wait! My only avenue is via Wi-Fi and that can brick the router. Well, as that is my only option (and I have been able to revive the thing once bricked already), I proceed. It goes swimmingly.
I test each LAN port – functioning. Wi-Fi – still ok. Cool. I spent some time configuring it (many more options than before) and now it’s running like a champ. Now I’m left with more research to do before I attempt another Talisman upgrade (or maybe I look for a v2.0 or later WRT54G on eBay anyway) and, of course, one revived router.
-Nino