Often, open embedded projects are facing unexpected roadblock - cost of the hardware platform. Embedded platform (SBC, PC-104 and similar) are priced as a specialized hardware and usually cost hundreds or thousands dollars. On the other hand, today's computer equipment shops are flooded with extremely cheap "DSL/Cable" routers, NAT firewalls, wireless access pointers and similar. Usually, "residential" router is priced under $50 ($100 if has wireless capabilities) and often has significant computing power inside (50-100Mhz ARM based CPU, 8-16Mbytes of memory, 10/100Mbit Ethernet, often WiFi).

Hardware Recycling Initiative (HRI) is an open source project with goal to port Linux (or its microcontroller clone - uClinux) into publicly available residential router hardware.

As a first stage of the HRI project, we'll investigate internals of a few most popular gateways. Reverse engineering of the original hardware will give us enough information about bootstrapping and device-specific features.

Second step is an actual porting of Linux kernel to one or many of these residential routers. We first focused on routers with architeture based on CX84200 (ADM5106) processor (ARM7TDMI nommu core) but, with help from the community, other architetures are problably on the way.

Finally, we hope releasing alternative firmwares so general people can download and use.

News:

• 02/May/04 - Petr Novak silently released the patches and build procedure for SMC7004ABR! Check here!
• 02/May/04 - Kai Gosnner packaged and boot HRI CVS kernel on Belkin F5D6231. He says a ramdisk is on the way!
• 24/Apr/04 - Greg Holdren and Marcelo Costa modified DI604P to not reboot periodically (the so called "hardware watchdog") so linux can run fine in them.
• 21/Apr/04 - Marvel chip "mantainer" resign. We need a new volunteer for it! (DLINK DI604P rev.E and Airlink+ ASOHO4P)
• 19/Apr/04 - Kai Gossner debug the DLF extension internal format and released a couple days latter DLFtool Utility. Now one can pack a kernel for MN100 and other routers!
• 12/Mar/04 - Marcelo Costa hooked a level shifter to Airlink+ router and get the boot messages!
• Past news

Current Status:

• Good analisis on many different routers. On various cases, complete testing firmwares were built and run on the units. We're moving toward building a good ramdisk and then a firmware to be released to general public, soon!
• ARJ, double-zip and DLF firmwares completely dissecated and firmware builder tools released
• Some hardwares (the one with watchdog timers) need to be investigated deeply, to see if we can mimic in linux so hardware modification will not be necessary anymore (mainly DLINK DI604P, but others have the same problem)

Hardware Under Close Investigation

Some info bellow is from external sites not directly related with this project!
Click on a device to know more about what we are doing with it.

Conexant CX84200 (ADM5106) based - OUR project!

• SMC7004VWBR rev.1 Wireless Residential Gateway
• SMC7004VBR rev.1 Residential Gateway
• D-Link DI-604 Rev A Residential Gateway/Firewall Note: Rev E uses a different hardware - ARM9 based!
• D-Link DI-764+
• NETGEAR FR114P / FR114WGE / FM114P / FM114PGR / FM114PGE (4MB RAM/1MB FLASH)
• Microsoft MN-100 and MN-500 (review)

Samsung S5N8947 based (seems to be somewhat compatible with S3C4510!)

• SMC7004ABR rev.2 Petr Novak's work!
• NorthQ9100 Rune Christensen's work!

Samsung S3C4510 based

• Seattle Wireless 4510 info
• Greg Holdren's CompUSA router page
• uCrouter.ru

Conexant CX82100 (ARM9) on Actiontec Dual PC modem router

• Wiki site info
• Mailing list

(Linksys BEFSX41 and SMC7004WFW also uses this processor)

Hardware Repository/Reviews/Internals/Links

Extensive list of Cable, DSL and WiFi routers reviewed by HRI and similar groups. Internals, photos, specifications, hacks and tons of other useful information.

Please send updates/new info/internal pictures of soho hardware to HRI list. We'll greatelly appreciate!

Tools

Hardware:

• UART/RS232 adapter
• JTAG adapter (also check the JTAG FAQ!)

Software:

• Cross-compilers: CYGWIN arm toolchain / Linux arm-elf-gcc HOWTO
• HRI's CVS kernel compile HOWTO
• View HRI's CVS code

Project summary page:

For summary, sources, history, mailing lists and other stuff, goto http://sourceforge.net/projects/hri

Mailing Lists

Announcements mailing list (for general info):

• To Subscribe or send e-mail to hri-news-request@lists.sourceforge.net
• Archive

Developer mailing list:

• To Subscribe or send e-mail to hri-devel-request@lists.sourceforge.net
• Archive

Useful Links

• Flash Memory programming
  
• FCC Searchable Database (for Wireless gear internals)
  

Acknowledgments

People from this project wish to thank to (among others):

• CIH <cih AT tatung dot com> - author of the CX84200 port
• Scottt Tsai <scottt AT tatung dot com> - for valuable hints on specifics of ported code
• Petr Novak - for his analisis on hardware internals, code and help
• Stas Khirman - for putting together all ppl working on this project

All coders on HRI list, LKML, arm-linux and uClinux lists and a very long etc.!