[Newlug] thin penguin

[telecomtom at vedatel.com]

the penguin continues to get thinner. maybe it will get back to basics
like they intended for the mach project? that's kind of speculative, but
here's something concrete:

a couple years ago i bought a linksys wrt54g at Best Buy. i think i must
have had "Sucker" written on my forehead, because they sold me a wrt54g
v5. remember that one? it has half the ram and half the flash memory of
previous versions. the resources were so small that linux wouldn't fit on
it. i felt like a fool.

then just yesterday i came across dd-wrt.com. i was getting desperate to
use the linksys as a wireless bridge for some old PCs that didn't have
wireless adapters and were in a location that was inconvenient to run a
cable to. it didn't look like linksys.com or any of the other commercial
sites were anywhere near supporting bridging firmware for the tiny little
innards of the v5. then i read some rumors about sveasoft and dd-wrt, and
finally came up with a couple of articles that got right down to the nitty
gritty:

http://www.bitsum.com/openwiking/owbase/ow.asp?WRT54G5_CFE
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Wireless_Bridge

it works. it really works. using the first webpage i installed ("flashed")
the thin penguin firmware (v24_micro_generic.bin, which was an update from
the v23 listed in the article) and then with the second webpage i
configured the (secondary) router as a bridge to connect the PCs to the
Belkin (primary) router and the internet. will wonders never cease?

kudos to Jeremy Collake (aka db90h) and the unnamed heros who helped him
with the project.

-- TT