Ok, so another year has passed and I didn’t even have time to make a “happy new year post” 🙁
Lot’s of things have changed during last year, too many for a single post.
First of all, my current setup:
Main system:
i7 2600k @ 4.0,
MSI MB w/ P67 and USB 3.0,
8GB DDR3 RAM (+8GB RMAed, awaiting replacement),
Saphire HD6950 2GB Toxic Edition (not unlockable, arghh!),
2x500GB (WD and Hitachi) + 1x640GB Samsung + 160GB also Samsung (for Linux) + 2TB USB 3.0 (Seagate inside) + 500GB NAS, Corsair TX850 PSU
Same old Antec 900 case.
Secondary: Athlon 2 2.8Ghz, Gigabyte Board w/ some ATI 700 series chipset, 4GB DDR2 RAM, ATI HD4670 for video, 2TB Samsung + 500GB Seagate for storage.
Funny thing is that I initially had only 8GB RAM (2x4GB Corsair) in my main PC and no plans for an upgrade. But one stick went bad and I had to RMA both sticks because this was a kit.
The shop said that they will be sending the RAM back to manufacturer for replacement and it will take about 10 days for the replacement to arrive.
Because I simply couldn’t afford to wait 10 days due to work, I was forced to buy 2 new modules to replace the ones I have RMAed.
Network:
Linksys WRT150N (DD-WRT) for main router, Belkin F73402 (also DD-WRT, custom build) router as Torrent, Samba, lightppd web server and some other apps box.
An old P3 1Ghz with 512MB of RAM for home server.
Some interesting things about the second router.
DD-WRT refused to support this thing due to it having a modem (which I don’t need, because I already have a modem), so had to build my own kernel from sources (it does not work OOB, you need to patch the broadcom flash driver or it will not detect the filesystem offset at startup) and use a FS from a working build to run DD-WRT. I used hacked Belkin build tools to build the final binary.
Everything works fine (well the LED indicators don’t work, but I don’t care about them) , except I had to use a serial cable for initial configuration, but now it configures everything at startup.
I also added a heatsink for the CPU, because it was getting too hot to touch.
Device Specs: BCM4718 SoC 533Mhz MIPS (underclocked to 453 MHz), 64MB DDR2 RAM, 8MB Flash, 4xLAN, Wireless N, USB 2.0, some proprietary Infineon modem (w/ 8MB of it’s own RAM), some custom Linux for firmware.
I can upload DD-WRT for F7D3402 firmware file (and some initial configurations) if you need it.
(be aware that using DD-WRT disables the modem part as it’s unsupported)
With DD-WRT and a little bit of configuration, this thing can be made into a nice WiFi hotspot and/or a BitTorrent/Samba box.
Enough for now, going to sleep, will post more later.
Hi,
I have the same f7d3402 modem/router, also don’t need the modem function, but I’m not familiar about what you done the modification of that, I had basic know how to use cfe browser or asus restore program to load tomato or dd-wrt firmware to my rt-n12b1,wl-500gx routers, now I need to load custom firmware to the f7d3402 modem/router to fit my needs for “AP+WDS” function, would you please teach me how to do this, and send me the modified firmware, BTW, can it load like tomato toast man firmware build for f7d3302 router which has the similar spec. except for modem function, I prefer tomato more than dd-wrt.
Anyway, thank you in advance and best regards.
I have modified Belkin’s own build files (Belkin’s FW is also Linux based) to use DD-WRT’s kernel and file system (I think OpenWrt or Tomato kernel + FS should work too).
You need to build your own kernel with patched bcm947xx-flash.c file.
(there’s a line that reads “Belkin Series” with 4 values, you need to change one of them to 0x00017116)
For the file system, I have used a standard file system from DD-WRT mini-usb nas build (extracted using FW modification kit).
DD-WRT F7D3402: http://ddscentral.org/creations/dd-wrt.v24-17084_NEWD-2_K2.6_mini_usb_nas_f7d3402_cust_z9.trx
A little warning: DD-WRT does not run OOB on this device. You need to use the SERIAL CABLE for initial configuration, because DD-WRT incorrectly configures the network interfaces at startup (so neither the Web UI nor telnet interface works “out of the box”).
Ok, now I know a little bit more of this, but I think that is still far away from my ability now to patch the firmware myself for my own need, I need to learn more of this or wait somebody to have done to become an easier package just like uploading firmware by webui or tftp way, thanks a lot for the information and I will download that patch file and do some more research of how to do by myself, you are the man.
regards.
DD-WRT will probably never support F7D3402 (it is listed as incompatible on their website) even though it’s very similar to the supported F7D4302 (except for the modem).
For DD-WRT to work OOB on F7D3402, I would need to modify the config files so that DD-WRT correctly configures network interfaces.
Everything else (WiFi, USB, Network) seems to work properly.
Wifi runs at only 2.4Ghz though, I need to update the kernel for 5Ghz to work.
I still have the build files somewhere, but the archive is too large to upload here (around 200MB).
I own a F7D3402 and wanted to use it solely as access point. Problem here is that I discovered that the device sends icmpv6 router advertisments over its wlan interface to associated clients while filtering out the router advertisments coming from the LAN side. (funny thing is, F7D3402 is announcing a prefix from 2001:db8::/32 which is reserved for documentation purposes.) There are options in the config file which can be exported associated to IPv6 but I didn’t manage to find out the proper checksum algorithm for the file.
So I decided to try the build you linked in your comment above. It works flawlessly so far. I didn’t even have to connect via serial cabel for initial config. Instead I could access the webinterface via WLAN. To get the connection between LAN and WLAN to work I added a startup script in the Web GUI containing the command “brctl addif br0 vlan0” (if I remember correctly). Now everything works as expected. When changing wireless settings a reboot is needed, probably some bridge parameter are changed during this. But that doesn’t bother me.
Do you have any newer build lying around?
Thanks for making the device usable for me!
Last build if anyone still needs it:
http://www.ddscentral.org/creations/ddwrt/DD-WRT_r17990_F7D3402_z10.rar
Didn’t notice the comment, thanks for noting, I didn’t try WLAN to access WebUI.
I have since retired this router, but might find a use for it.