| reply to VirtualLarry
Re: Network Everywhere NWR11B - need hacked firmware! Hello, I did not check to see how old this post was, but I did find it interesting to see that my cheap NWR11B wal-mart wireless router is regarded by a few of you folks to be quite a buy.
I did some research for you folks to see if I could find the ROOT of the processor chip. I was able to track the chip's assembly code maker back to Altera, which is the leading company in FPGAs and CPLDs. I realize you folks are looking for a Linux kernal to upgrade your router with, but has anyone thought to take it a step further, and drop it down to assembly level? At this level you have full control of the pins and the CPU's functions, you can tell the processor exactly what you want it to do.
According to the processor specifications, this processor has an on board UART interface, which means you would be able to connect your serial port to this chip.
The actual chip maker is Lexra (LX5280 32-bit RISC CPU). It seems that Realtek simply wrote the code and assembled the chipset. The good news to all of this is that one could probably change the code with-in the processor by using a JTAG cable connected to the UART of the chip. To me, the chip looks like an FPGA with a embedded CPU, with most FPGAs you have to hold the runtime program inside of an external EEPROM, which may be the 2 memory chips that somebody mentioned earlier. One would have to crossreference the 2 memory chips to see if they were RAM chips, or EEPROM chips as this would make a big difference in how to proceed with programming. If it is RAM, then the chip would almost certainly have some kind of on-board space where the program resides, this may make it a CPLD with an embedded processor. Very few FPGAs can hold their own program within the chip. I guess what I am getting at here is that this chip is simply an average DSP chip that can be reprogrammed. The development tools are FREE from Altera, as long as, you make them think you are a business when you register for the download.
Another thing, for the conspiracy theory, when I did a google search for Lexra LX5280 32-bit RISC CPU, i found a webpage that linked to an Altera site, guess what? that site is not there anymore! So I then did a google search for the HTML file that used to be on the Altera site, and I found the following;
»web.archive.org/web/200101161750···ml#note1
»web.archive.org/web/200101161729···180.html
TADAAAA!
There are some other interesting sites regarding these chips, the main key words are "Lexra LX5280 32-bit RISC CPU Altera Realtek 8181" I will see what I can do with respect to retrieveing the code from the Lexra processor in my unit; this can be done as long as they did not set the security bit when they downloaded the code. I am sort of new to FPGA and CPLD programming so it would take me a little time before I could come up with any reliable code, bear with me and expect more posts. LF |
