OT linksys wrt54g third-party firmware

[Rob Funk]

Stephen J. Smith wrote:
> I decided to go with firmware from wifibox's project, which is hosted on
> sourceforge at http://sourceforge.net/projects/wifi-box/.

Last I heard the wifi-box developer had disappeared.  I notice that nothing 
seems to have happened on that sourceforge project since February.

Besides Sveasoft and Wifi-Box there's also OpenWRT:
  http://openwrt.ksilebo.net./
And Ewrt, a fork of the Sveasoft firmware:
  http://www.portless.net/ewrt/

Also, a way to get started playing with the box is the volatile-memory-only 
Batbox installation.  It doesn't touch the firmware, but allows you to get 
a shell on the box to explore and change things.
  http://www.batbox.org/wrt54g-linux.html

> I also had to turn the transmit power up from 25% to 100% (another
> feature of the new firmware).  I just couldn't resist!  I haven't had a
> chance to measure the benefits (if any) of the increased power yet.

That's a very dangerous thing to do.  People have burned out their WRT54G 
boxes going up to full power.  There's a reason the default is not full 
power.  You're probably safe going up a bit from the default, but I'd hold 
off from going all the way up.

And don't forget that doubling the power only adds 3dB of signal, so you 
only added 6dB by quadrupling.  You're better off getting a better 
antenna.  (See the book "Wireless Hacks".)

> ESR wrote a howto on these Linksys beasties that you might be interested
> in: http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Linksys-Blue-Box-Router-HOWTO/index.html.

The original canonical source of info on these boxes is:
http://www.seattlewireless.net/index.cgi/LinksysWrt54g

> Do you know if your router is version 2 or 1?  I think it matters but
> I'm not sure.

Actually there are three versions of the WRT54G, 1.0, 1.1, and 2.  1.0 has 
more lights than the others.  2 has a faster processor, more memory (I 
think) and a slightly rearranged interface naming scheme.

Then there's the WRT54GS, which has a nonstandard higher-speed capability 
and more memory.

-- 
==============================| "A slice of life isn't the whole cake
 Rob Funk <rfunk at funknet.net> | One tooth will never make a full grin"
 http://www.funknet.net/rfunk |    -- Chris Mars, "Stuck in Rewind"