The E2000 is actually the WRT320N with a working reset button and E3000 is the new WRT610N v2. But that doesn’t that mean you have to ditch your current router if you own one of these already, especially just to get the extra 32k of NVRAM. You can actually update the CFE of the older model and transform your WRT320N or WRT610N v2 into the E2000 or E3000 respectively. The CFE is basically the BIOS of the router.

I actually found out how after a lot of searching on the DD-WRT forums. Thanks to users barryware and LOM, we have a way to upgrade the CFE. The procedure for both routers are the same, but at the DD-WRT forums, they are on 2 separate threads and buried in the “Broadcom Based Routers” section. So here’s my single article on it to make it easier to find for those of you who want to follow in my footsteps & convert your routers. I did this for 2 WRT610Ns and 5 WRT320Ns and so far, everything works well.

Advantages of converting:

- You get double NVRAM

- Future proofing

DISADVANTAGES of converting:

- Flashing CFE is not like flashing firmware. You fail & your router = brick

- Advantages not worth the risk for some people

Knowledge required:

- Using a Hex editor. NOTEPAD, WORDPAD, ETC IS NOT A HEX EDITOR!

- Use SSH and SCP

- Flash and use DD-WRT firmware

- Know how to do a serial port & JTAG recovery on your router

You MUST know how to do the first 3 or YOU WILL FAIL. The last one is extremely helpful if something goes wrong, but you’re taking a big risk if you don’t know how do it.

DISCLAIMER: NOBODY will take responsibility or be liable for anything you do to your router. If you brick it trying these procedures, YOU are solely responsible for your actions. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Important notes:

- The WRT320N has a working JTAG, the WRT610N doesn’t. If you fail with the CFE flash, you may be able to recover your WRT320N, but your WRT610N will be dead.

- Both routers have a working serial console. If you fail to flash the modified firmware before rebooting, you may be able to recover by using the serial console to clear NVRAM and re-flash the firmware.

- E3000 conversion only works on a WRT610N v2. It will not work, and will brick your v1.

- Do NOT power cycle your router at any time until you have completely finished and can confirm that the router has booted up into an operational state.

- READ these instructions completely, a few times, before you proceed. Save them to a safe place. I also suggest you download the files needed in advanced.

1.) Flash you router with DD-WRT (an ordinary K26 big build), reset to defaults, set an admin password, and enable SSH.

2.) Open http://[your router's ip]/backup/cfe.bin and save your current CFE to a safe place.

3.) Download the appropriate CFE for your router below:

- WRT320N => E2000

- WRT610N v2 => E3000

4.) Using a Hex editor, modify your CFE so that it has your router’s MAC address, serial number, and 8-digit easy access PIN. All of these numbers are on the sticker under your router. The easy access PIN is the number that is in the white space next to the “synchronize” arrows and looks like XXXX-XXXX. In the CFE, it is a single string XXXXXXXX.

Here are the offsets…

E2000:

MAC @ 0x3E098

SN @ 0x3E0AD

PIN @ 0x3E0C2

E3000:

MAC @ 0x1E00

SN @ 0x3FE30

PIN @ 0x3FCDC

4.) Connect your router to a reliable power source. REMEMBER: Do NOT power cycle your router at any time until you have completely finished and can confirm that the router has booted up into an operational state.

5.) SCP the modified CFE into /tmp on the router.

6.) SSH into your router using “root”. The password is your web interface password.

7.) Run the following commands:
cd /tmp
mtd unlock cfe
mtd write -f [cfe's file name] cfe

8.) It will only take a few seconds to flash the CFE. But you are not done yet – DO NOT REBOOT. Go back to the router’s web interface and upload the modified firmware, making sure your set the “Reset to defaults” option. This modified firmware tricks your router in thinking its the proper build, but is indeed the build for the converted model so that after a reset, it can boot the proper image. The downloads are here: E2000 and E3000.

9.) The router will reset itself upon flashing this modified firmware. Be patient – it can take up to 10 minutes and a few reboot cycles to complete. If your are successful, you should be able to access the DD-WRT admin page at http://192.168.1.1.

10.) One last thing: set a password, and flash a proper DD-WRT E2000 or E3000 build, making sure you reset to defaults again. You can find them in the “Other Downloads” section on the DD-WRT website.

Done! You should now have a converted E2000 or E3000! You can even flash the stock firmware for the E2000 or E3000 and use it if you’d like.

What I found was that DD-WRT actually likes the extra NVRAM better. YMMV. Cheers!

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This one is tricky, you can’t just use the traditional method of running msiexec with the /p parameter and patch over the MSI. What makes it worse is that certain updates can’t be slip streamed or they will prevent future updates from being applied. One can only imagine the headaches that can come out of trying to deploy this without having to install the numerous patches after.

As of writing, the Adobe website only offers Acrobat Pro 9.0 as a download (trial) and it is likely the same for those that have access to the Adobe Licensing website. The problem is that the latest update brings Acrobat Pro to version 9.3.4. How? Via 10 .msp patches: 9.1.0, 9.1.1, 9.1.2, 9.1.3, 9.2.0, 9.3.0, 9.3.1, 9.3.2, 9.3.3, 9.3.4. These msp’s range from a mere 1.6MB to a whopping 126.7MB each!

Enough chatter, let’s get started. Looking at the Adobe knowledgebase article, there’s a specific order & specific patches we must apply upon “slipstreaming”. Here’s the website: http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/498/cpsid_49880.html.

In short, only “Quarterly” updates can be slipstreamed in order to allow future updates to be integrated. So to bring 9.0 up to 9.3.3 (can’t do 9.3.4 because it’s a “Security” update, we need the following patches:

9.1.0 :: AcroProStdUpd910_T1T2_incr.msp
9.1.2 :: AcrobatUpd912_all_incr.msp
9.2.0 :: AcrobatUpd920_all_incr.msp
9.3.0 :: AcrobatUpd930_all_incr.msp
9.3.2 :: AcrobatUpd932_all_incr.msp
9.3.3 :: AcrobatUpd933_all_incr.msp

You can download them from Adobe here: http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=1&platform=Windows.

You will also need a copy of the Acrobat Pro 9.0 installation. If you are a retail user, you can download the Trial version from Adobe’s public website. If you are an enterprise or volume license user, you must download from the Adobe LWS. Both user types can use the original installation media (CD/DVD) but make sure you substitute the corporate for the retail version or vice versa.

If you downloaded the installers, extract them to a folder. If you have the the CD/DVD, copy the “Acrobat Professional 9″ folder to a writable location. Inside this folder you should see setup.exe, AcroPro.msi, Data1.cab, setup.ini, a few mst’s, etc.

Now copy the .msp files (updates) you downloaded into the same folder. Open up setup.ini in an editor like notepad and underneath the “[Product]” section, append the following to the end of the section:

PATCH="AcroProStdUpd910_T1T2_incr.msp;AcrobatUpd912_all_incr.msp;AcrobatUpd920_all_incr.msp;AcrobatUpd930_all_incr.msp;AcrobatUpd932_all_incr.msp;AcrobatUpd933_all_incr.msp"

Save & close. Remember, when a future quarterly patch comes out, save it to the same folder and just add it’s file name to the end of this string inside setup.ini.

Now we have an installer that will install all the quarterly updates when we run setup.exe. Now just configure your deployment solution to copy this entire folder to the client and run setup.exe with the required parameters (no reboot, silent, etc – you can fund them by running “setup.exe /?”).

Thanks, Adobe, for making this such a nuisance.

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First, lets have a look at its design:

Do you see that indicator on the front? Yes, that’s right… It’s a meter that shows the disk usage. The problem is that this meter must function in order for the flash drive to initialize and be readable to the operating system. Through some trial and major error, I found out it reads the first available FAT32 or NTFS partition. If one doesn’t exist, the flash drive simply keeps rebooting itself, rendering it completely unusable unless you can get it to create partition before it shuts itself down again. So if you plan on reformatting this drive, make sure you don’t delete partitions! Or, if you do, make sure you immediately create one afterwards.

Bad bad! Shame on you, Lexar…

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Today, I bring to you… How to overclock the Nokia N900! Since the first sighting of an overclocked Cortex-A8 processor has appeared, the folks at maemo.org have managed to flash the N900 with customized kernels in order to allow the CPU to be overclocked up to 1.2GHz (DSP up to 500MHz)! But due to liability concerns, only the kernel images of up to 930MHz have been posted.

Technically, the battery life would be less, but the N900 dynamically scales the CPU speed down to 250MHz when it is idle. The custom kernel allows it to go down to 125MHz.

Personally, I have flashed the 850MHz / 450MHz DSP kernel via XTerminal and the phone is definitely a lot snappier & responsive. So far, it’s been stable for me. As with any overclocking, you are on your own and accept the fact that you may cause hardware damage. In no way is anyone liable for such modifications. Period. You have been warned.

The kernels require N900 firmware PR1.1 or greater to run. However, since PR1.2 is coming soon, I highly recommend you restore the stock kernel before upgrading to the newest firmware or you may see some problems. As a side note, these customized kernel images were based off of PR1.1.1 and will almost definitely be incompatible with PR1.2. So once the new firmware has been released, WAIT for a new version of the custom kernels!

If you’re still interested, here’s a link to the guide that jakiman (thanks!) over @ maemo.org has put together: http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=595582&postcount=774

Props to lehto and titan @ maemo.org for their work in creating these wonderful mods. I will update you guys if anything interesting shows up with the overclocking between now and PR1.2.

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You can use an Vista or Windows 7 upgrade key to do a clean install of their respective operating systems.

How? Do a clean install of Windows. Then run the installer (from the DVD) inside the unactivated copy of Windows you just installed to “upgrade”. Your installation is now marked as an upgrade and you can activate Windows with your upgrade key. Make sure you pick the same version of Windows & architecture (x86 vs x64) you are licensed for both times.

What this means for you? You never have to pay full price for Windows, unless of course, if you can’t wait for the second install.

Additional tip: Create a bootable USB flash drive (at least 4GB) from the installation DVD and use that instead. Each install can then be done in about 10-15 minutes since it’s not using the optical media.

Cheers.

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Some examples:
- Random audio hiccups
- Every time I open Adobe Soundbooth, open a file in soundbooth, or change my microphone settings, I get a brief, but loud piano slamming noise. Also any music or sounds I was playing in the background kept switching between stereo and mono output

Seems like the issue was that the default formats for the speakers and the microphone didn’t match up. In Windows 7 (and Vista), there’s an “Advanced” tab when you open up the sound properties and double click a device. This allows you to set the default format. Make sure the microphone inputs (particularly the “Microphone Array”) and the “Speakers / Headphones” have matching formats.

For the audio hiccups fix, you need to disable the power management option in the IDT’s control panel applet. (Preferences “tab”)

Also as a note about an earlier issue: Sound won’t play back through the built in speakers…
- You need to disable the “Independent (R.T.C.) Headphones” device or the sound driver will get confused.
- You also need to make sure the “Speakers / Headphones” device, “Custom” tab has the “PC Spk Mute” unchecked. What this option really means is to mute the built-in speakers, not to get rid of the annoying PC beep that occurs once in a blue moon. Redundant of course since plugging in external speakers or headphones already accomplishes this.

Now that the sound card works like it should, audio entertainment has been much more enjoyable

Driver Version as of writing: 6.10.0.6229 (Dell A12, they’re from the M6500 download page)
Default Format I’m using: “24 bit, 48000 Hz (Studio Quality)”

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As a note: my wireless routers are not used as routers but as access points and bridges.

Basically, you have to leave WMM support enabled in order for most 802.11n wireless cards to connect to an access point supporting 802.11n. But in my scenario, a wireless router configured as a bridge was the client. WMM is an extension of 802.11e, which is Quality of Service (QoS) for wireless protocols. The N-wireless standard requires that this is supported.

The important thing I discovered was that the bridge client needs to have WMM support disabled or download speeds will be less than 1 Mbps (as measured by http://speedtest.net) while upload speeds were normal for my ISP (Comcast Cable). I’m not exactly sure why, but it makes sense that the wireless client should not be setting WMM priorities over top of the access point’s priorities. It just confuses the communications since “upload” from the AP means “download” for the client and vice versa.

So yes, if you have wireless bridges & APs, especially those running custom firmware, be aware of these settings.

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