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NWR04B: Version 0.3 released, or, \"The madness continues\"

20 Dec 2005

Welp, six weeks after upgrading to 2.4.31-uc0, four months after the first release, and nearly a year after getting the goddamned thing in the first place, I'm finally releasing version 0.3 of Linux for the NWR04B. Share and enjoy!

The big change from 0.1 (version 0.2 was never released to my adoring public) is that I've upgraded to the 2.4.31 uClinux kernel, copying over the necessary bits from Codeman's original kernel. This was mainly done in hopes of getting access to the onboard flash memory through the more up-to-date MTD code tree. After a lot of work disassembling the factory firmware for this thing, I finally figured out that one of the GPIO lines? leads? values? needs to be twiddled in order to write to flash successfully. Thus, the onboard flash is being recognized as an AMD-compatable device, which should allow me to erase it and write my own FS there.

Note that I say should. Right now the necessary twiddling is only done at detection time in the kernel, and the code to do so has been rammed in with a crowbar; there is absolutely no grace to this at all. (cfi_probe_chip() in uClinux-2.4.31-uc0/drivers/mtd/chips/cfi_probe.c makes Baby Linus cry.) And when I try changing the necessary bits using devmem2 (included in the tarballs, which I forgot to document) and then erase, the kernel panics. But hey! It's all progress, far as I'm concerned. :-)

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5 Comments

From: Schreu
01-September-2005-04:18:36

hi,
i also followed your work :) cause i need a small embedded device running linux and i own one of theese wr1133 branded by "sitecom"
i wonder if the other two connectors maybe compact flash connectors.....
where do you think may usb be connected? i cant find it on the board.
what kind of wireless lan card was built in your router? mine is with a atmel at76C502A chipset, and i think there is no way getting it working under linux in monitor or master mode.

sorry for my bad english :)

From: Saint Aardvark
01-September-2005-19:53:03

Joe -- thanks very much for the compliments! I suspect Asterisk might be a bit too much for one of these things -- no MMU and all. But maybe a Beowulf cluster of them...:-)

Schreu: thanks for stopping by. And don't worry, your English is a heck of a lot better than my German. :-)

I'd never thought about what the other two connectors might be -- I suppose they could be Compact Flash. I've never seen a CF connector on a board, so I've no idea.

You could try tracing the headers back to the CPU and see where it turns up. The datasheet for the CPU can be found here. The datasheet mentions that the chip has a USB 1.1 client interface, so that's why I suggest USB could be connected to this thing; I haven't actually done it yet.

The wireless card on mine is also an Atmel 76C502A. All I know about this card is what I've put on the page of reference material about this router. However, it is just a PC card -- seems no reason you couldn't just throw in another one that does what you want.

If you download the code, let me know how it turns out -- I'm very curious to hear how other people make out with this!

From: Joe
30-August-2005-23:22:14

There have DEFINITELY been people following this site and your progress :). This is amazingly cool. Not only that stuff you said, but maybe it could run Asterisk (VoIP pbx) or NoCat (for making hotspots) or just serve as a IPSec/PPTP VPN gateway.

You rock!

From: Simon
21-March-2006-16:19:23

Is this firmware only for Linux or it works with windows ?

From: Saint Aardvark
22-March-2006-07:31:48

The firmware itself is Linux, and needs to be loaded onto the NWR04B in order to run. To load it, you need a serial cable connected from the router to another computer, and some program there that'll load it onto the router; that could be HyperTerminal if you're running Windows, or Minicom if you're running Linux, or whatever.

At this point, the firmware doesn't actually do anything too useful -- it doesn't run as a router or firewall, there's no working wireless card, and so on. I think it's neat, but it's not nearly as well-developed or useful as the Linux firmware you can get for other routers, like the Linksys WRTG54.

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