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NWR04B: Checksum solved!

28 Feb 2005

I finally figured out the last bit (well, at least the last bit that varied significantly) in the checksum for the NWR04B firmware. I've updated the wiki and the checksum program. The program not only lets me duplicate the firmware I've already got (ie, it puts the bits back together so that they match the original), but lets me crash the router in new and interesting ways.

Just for fun, I tried making an image from the original hack's root filesystem. I was able to get the router to apply the upgrade, but (surprise!) nothing happened when it rebooted -- it verified the checksum then did nothing, and I had to upload an old firmware image by Ymodem over the serial cable. But hey! Progress!

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12 Comments

From: onewattbulb
05-March-2005-18:26:04

well i lived up to my name lastnight... applied the "upgrade" firmware from the network everywhere site and, it being an older version then the one it was shipped with, i got a paperweight now, and it's not even mine. I gotta get it fixed ASAP... i'd appreciate it if you could contact me and help to guide me through the process of putting the old version back, so it will work again. Thanks in Advance.

onewatt

From: Joe
05-March-2005-23:07:11

onewatt: you could just read the rest of the posts and comments on this site, tons of links and people's experiences.

From: Saint Aardvark
06-March-2005-05:23:22

Ouch! Sorry to hear that.

Unfortunately, it's not an easy procedure. The problem is that the
firmware from the site is bad, and the router can see this when it boots
up -- but the only way to communicate with it at that point is over a
serial cable. And the only way to do *that* is by making your own
serial port adapter, then attaching bits to the board that give it a
place to connect to, then using a program like Hyperterminal or Minicom
to talk to the board over the serial port.

If you're familiar with a soldering iron and can read schematics, you
can do it for maybe $20 in parts. If you're not, then you need to find
someone who can do it for you..

Have a look at my blog
(http://saintaardvarkthecarpeted.com/blog/index.php?cat=15) and the wiki
page...which just got spammed, so it's going to take me a while to get
that back up again. Sorry. I'll put something up on the blog when the
info in the wiki is back.

Anyhow -- hope this helps.

From: Andrew
06-March-2005-20:45:33

I happened to have wandered into the same boat as Mr. Onewatt here as well. Actually, it's kind of scary how much of the same boat it is. (the router is borrowed and everything, except the guy I borrowed it from had it collecting dust in a drawer. It couldn't quite stand up to four computers all running P2P while using the original Network Everywhere excuse-for-a-firmware). I couldn't leave well enough alone, and went ahead and flashed that Repotec firmware (the one I mentioned in the last blog post - the firmware on the server that was offline at the time), and *BOOM*... paperweight.

I almost got out of it easy... Staples Canada had it on their site for $20 CDN, but I contacted them and they claimed that it wasn't in stock any more, and was removed from the site a couple days later. Brick & mortar stores around here say they've never heard of it either.

I'm almost wondering if I should just go buy that Linksys WRT54G. It's got some insane stability - one of them's been in use for a lab of around 20 computers at my college and, barring a single power outage, the thing hasn't been touched since September. Plus I've found a nice little Linux project for it, and the prospect of remote Wake-On-Lan through the router is something I know I could use. But I really would like to fix this thing...

Decisions, decisions.

From: Saint Aardvark
07-March-2005-06:16:31

Andrew -- you had problems after upgrading to the Runtop firmware? Sorry to hear that. I haven't come across that before myself; at the risk of suggesting the obvious, have you tried holding the reset button for 30 seconds or so?

And yeah, the WRT54G is really nice. If Staples'd had them on for $20, I wouldn't be writing this right now. :-)

From: Jack
07-March-2005-06:55:12

I've been evesdropping on this for a while. My main goal is to be able to use the router as a wireless bridge,
but i'm curious about other prospects aswell (embedded wireless systems).

I see that there have been many new firmwares discovered for this thing. The original that I have with mine is
"1.18" and the one on the website is 1.02....so my question is a) what happened to 03->17?, and more importantly,
WHERE can one find the 1.18 version (other than IN the router?!?!).

Having said that, has anyone tabulated a list of the available features in all the other (Runtop, Repotec, etc)
firmwares? Are the interfaces identical? Of these, which is the best one?

From: pck
07-March-2005-06:56:03

I've been evesdropping on this for a while. My main goal is to be able to use the router as a wireless bridge,
but i'm curious about other prospects aswell (embedded wireless systems).

I see that there have been many new firmwares discovered for this thing. The original that I have with mine is
"1.18" and the one on the website is 1.02....so my question is a) what happened to 03->17?, and more importantly,
WHERE can one find the 1.18 version (other than IN the router?!?!).

Having said that, has anyone tabulated a list of the available features in all the other (Runtop, Repotec, etc)
firmwares? Are the interfaces identical? Of these, which is the best one?

From: Saint Aardvark
07-March-2005-07:19:12

I've no idea where to find the 1.18 firmware; I think that's something only NE could answer. Anyhow, from what other people have reported here the other firmwares seem both more stable and more capable. I did have a wiki here with some comments on the different firmwares, but it got spammed...bastards...so it's on hold until I recover the pages. Of course, if anyone wants to chip in here with comments, that'd be great.

From: Al
10-March-2005-20:03:14

Hi, I got mine about a week ago. I was hesitant at first as I had a bad experience with a NE pcmcia wifi card but it's only $20 so I went for it. Hooked it up and hurray! everything seemed to be ok. Then I figured well golly I'll go see if there's a firmware update... You know the rest:(. Googled and found you, built the adapter but the pig won't talk to me. Tripple checked wireing, etc... Tried straight and null cables. No go. Even plugged in a modem to make sure my com port was ok. I'm thinking I now have a $20 4 port switch and a WIFI card to play with and that's about it. Any ideas? Interesting site by the way.

From: Saint Aardvark
11-March-2005-06:47:07

Hi Al -- I had the wrong pinouts listed in the picture (http://saintaardvarkthecarpeted.com/pix/pictures/showPicture.php?image=644&album=20) -- Brett pointed this out to me last night. I got UDI0 and UDO0 mixed up -- pin 3 in the picture is UDI0, which goes to pin 12 in the HRI schematic (http://hri.sourceforge.net/tools/index.html#uart), while pin 7 is UDO0, which goes to pin 11 in the HRI schematic. I had them backwards in the picture....my bad, and sorry about that.

I've got to make some better documentation for what I did, but I'm going away for a week so it's going to be a while before it gets done.

And thanks for the compliment on the site!

From: chance
15-March-2005-20:51:07

i have a wrt54g and it is a beast not only can you hack onb the firmware but you can make it have a couple of serial cables one of which i use to route a 3com serial modem(dialup EWWWW) but hey its what i can get access to.

im insanely jealous i paid 80$ american for mine... thats like 100 CA

From: Al
19-March-2005-15:39:16

It's alive! Thanks for the correction, no worries about the pin mix-up. I'm just happy to have the thing fully functional again. If you're interested I have redrawn the wiring diagram to reflect the configuration for the NWR04B and copied the buffer from Hyperterminal. I can email them to you.

TNX Al.

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