Turn a Fonera router into a link station
1 Getting root access to the Fonera
There are many ways to gain access to a router hardware. Some vendors provide a way to flash the router through an upload interface. Other vendors (like ASUS) provide a TFTP flash procedure. Most devices however somewhere have serial pins with which you can directly access a root shell. That's the case with the fonera router.
Nevertheless, you can't just connect it to the serial port of your workstation, because the voltage levels are different. You need to adapt the 5 V, or even 12 V from your computer to the 3.3 V on the device and vice versa. The 3.3V level is called TTL. For this reason I have built a level shifter, but you can buy ready kits from a multitude of vendors, also on Ebay.
But be careful you get the right converter chip! There are different versions, one for 5 V, one for 3.3 V. You definitely need the 3.3 V version.
Then start a minicom. Needless to say, forget WINDOWS on your workstation, since Hyperterminal isn't even part of VISTA any more. Hasta la Vista, baby. On linux, the package is called minicom. And you must make sure you configure the serial port correctly. Follow the instructions here:
- http://wiki.openwrt.org/OpenWrtDocs/Hardware/Fon/Fonera
- http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/LaFonera_Hardware_Serial-Cable-Port
Then replug the power cord and you can observe this:
+PHY ID is 0022:5521 Ethernet eth0: MAC address xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx IP: 0.0.0.0/255.255.255.255, Gateway: 0.0.0.0 Default server: 0.0.0.0 RedBoot(tm) bootstrap and debug environment [ROMRAM] Non-certified release, version v1.3.0 - built 16:57:58, Aug 7 2006 Copyright (C) 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 Red Hat, Inc. Board: ap51 RAM: 0x80000000-0x81000000, [0x80040450-0x80fe1000] available FLASH: 0xa8000000 - 0xa87f0000, 128 blocks of 0x00010000 bytes each. == Executing boot script in 1.000 seconds - enter ^C to abort == Executing boot script in 1.000 seconds - enter ^C to abort == Executing boot script in 1.000 seconds - enter ^C to abort ^C RedBoot> ^C RedBoot> ^C RedBoot>
The RedBoot is kindof a BIOS and a good point to start flashing.
2 Flashing the Fonera
This procedure worked for me:
