wl-520gc differences

[richms]

I was under the impression that the router was the same other then the presense of the USB socket and the stuff to power it.

But when booting it shows as a wl-530gc so there is something different. I recall a site that said something about modding it by putting in the USB socket and related componentry, but first I will need to get software working on it.

When doing the mightyohm howto I get it locking up soon after start up, and there is no network in /etc/config to edit, no network up at all - so I only have serial access to it. Any pointers at all on getting it working? tried running firstboot again to see if it made the files but no joy.

Im thinking there may be a nvram to tell it what hardware it is but no idea where to begin at this stage.

Only want to use the GC since they are available, the GU is out of stock and no more due for months, and is about NZ$20 more as well.

edit - fixed the title to have correct model number

[mightyohm]

If you mean the WL-520gC (not 530) then yes, these two routers appear to share the same base hardware. There should be some notes on the PCB about which components are different between the two versions of the router.

There's a slide about this with some pictures in my NOTACON talk (page 26 of the pdf):

http://mightyohm.com/blog/2009/04/notac ... -download/

Can you post the bootlog here? It sounds like the network interface is not being detected at startup.

[Madox]

Actually the 520GCs here in Aus seem to have only 2MB flash as opposed to the 4MB on the GU and there are some other differences which I've forgotten.

I had to order my 520GU online since most brick and mortar shops either didn't stock it or were out of stock...postage from Aus to NZ should be reasonable if that is your last resort.

[mightyohm]

Actually the 520GCs here in Aus seem to have only 2MB flash as opposed to the 4MB on the GU and there are some other differences which I've forgotten.

...

This is really good to know, and kind of puts a damper on doing much of anything with the GC. 2MB is not very much flash.

[richms]

Ok, got a GU off trademe for cheal (NZ$35 with a useless adsl router as well) so am resuming the messing around.

I found another site where they had put dd-wrt micro onto a 520GC and a USB flash drive with the rest of the file system on it. Once I have a better handle on how things work I will try sticking a hub inside and a small drive of a couple of gigs to see if I can get it working, till then I will just go ahead with the GU that I got.