Wireless routers! Why 1MB chips?!?

[AmEv]

I have 2 older wireless routers. $5 each. Which is why I got them.

First is a Netgear WGR614 V4.
Second is a Dynex DX-WGRTR v1011

I'm trying to get DD-WRT on both of them.

Rip them both apart so I know what they are.

I took at the chips.

Both are 1MB in size, and the smallest DD-WRT is 2MB!:evil::evil:

:(

Any solutions?

[TLHarrell]

Replace the chips with bigger ones? Might be possible. Might not be worth the effort.

[AmEv]

I do know that the Dynex is an 8-pin serial flash, often used with BIOSes.

Perhaps finding one that's compatible with the controller?

[TLHarrell]

They cost you $5. Worth a try if you got some more compatible chips around, and a very small soldering iron tip.

[Konrad]

Many old (pre-iPhone) PDAs could double their RAM/ROM by piggyback soldering a second memory chip onto the first so they'd share pins, then rewriting the (WinCE/WindowsMobile/PalmOS) memory driver to properly address it. The OS on your WiFi routers is likely embedded in the firmware encoded within the main controller or a companion ASIC chip, so rewriting it would probably be a bit too involved for one-off projects, and it might be impossible anyhow if the firmware is codelocked. You could rebuild the router hardware to upgrade memory capacity; probably requiring an upgrade to the memory controller logic and additional address lines ... but again you'd probably have to get involved with recoding the main controller logic, and you might find that the architecture is still capped at 1MB regardless how much physical memory is present.

I think that you're just out of luck, barring the possibility of a future release of a 1MB DD-WRT package. If you want DD-WRT you're just gonna have to choose or build compatible hardware.

[AmEv]

The main chip is a Broadcom BCM5354KFBG.
The ROM chip is a MA 25L8005M2C.

[AmEv]

DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUDE!



The controller has USB 2.0 headers!

Here's the datasheet on the controller:

http://www.alldatasheet.com/datasheet-pdf/pdf/175111/BOARDCOM/BCM5354.html

Supports 1MB to 32MB paralell/serial flash.



By the looks of it, I can throw a new serial chip in it, serial/jtag/tftp into it, and throw a decent DD-WRT on it!

[TLHarrell]

Nice find! Isn't the internet cool. Used to be a consumer device like this was nothing more than a magic box you plug wires into, and it does what it is supposed to do. Now we can literally pick these things apart at the component level, figure out what each part does, and add functionality. Cool stuff.

Please do post a detailed writeup on this little project.

[Konrad]

I'm a little surprised, because as often as not they build these things so that they're black-box impossible for end users to service or modify. A gooey blob of epoxy encoded with some factory-proprietary barcoded QA-signatured OEM part number, instead of a nice little chip package with proper markings.

I suppose we have the FCC to thank for WiFi devices being so serviceable. Their regulatory standards are rather stringent about transmission-capable devices. Which reminds me, you might find more technical data filed in the public FCC-OET database, look it up with the FCCID.

[AmEv]

Fcc Id# K7sf5d7230d