Linksys 160NL w/DDWRT

I have a Linksys 160NL and I'm looking at the DD-WRT software but changing
to it makes me a little nervous as I'm pretty sure there's no going back. I
use DD-WRT for a WRT54G I've turned into a wireless bridge and its fine but
I've never heard much about the 160NL version.
Does anyone have any experience with the 160NL and DD-WRT software?

On Mon, 7 Jun 2010 23:10:04 -0400, "jch" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>I have a Linksys 160NL and I'm looking at the DD-WRT software but changing
>to it makes me a little nervous as I'm pretty sure there's no going back. I
>use DD-WRT for a WRT54G I've turned into a wireless bridge and its fine but
>I've never heard much about the 160NL version.
>Does anyone have any experience with the 160NL and DD-WRT software?

Sorry, no experience with the 160NL, but I'm curious why you think you
can't go back to stock if you try dd-wrt and decide you don't like it?

On my WRT54G's (v1 and v3) and WRT54GL's (v1.1), I had no trouble
going from stock to dd-wrt to Tomato to stock and back to dd-wrt.
Would it be different for the 160NL?

jch wrote:
> I have a Linksys 160NL and I'm looking at the DD-WRT software but changing
> to it makes me a little nervous as I'm pretty sure there's no going back. I
> use DD-WRT for a WRT54G I've turned into a wireless bridge and its fine but
> I've never heard much about the 160NL version.
> Does anyone have any experience with the 160NL and DD-WRT software?
>
>
Hi,
Going back? Why not? You just reflash wuth stock f/w.My WRT600N and 610N
V.2 has dd-wrt. Works just fine.

FAQ #112 doesn't refer to reverting to back to original firmware from DDWRT
or from any 3rd party firmware.

My concern was that because of the various prep and kill images needed to
install DDWRT (like on my WRT54G v5.1) I couldn't go back to the original
firmware. I'm not sure where I got that idea. I thought those special
pre-images did something to prohibit going back. So.... I gather from the
responses here that switching back and forth from DDWRT to Linksys firmware
is not an issue?



Bob wrote:
> On 08/06/2010 04:10, jch wrote:
>> I have a Linksys 160NL and I'm looking at the DD-WRT software but
>> changing to it makes me a little nervous as I'm pretty sure there's
>> no going back. I use DD-WRT for a WRT54G I've turned into a wireless
>> bridge and its fine but I've never heard much about the 160NL
>> version. Does anyone have any experience with the 160NL and DD-WRT
>> software?
>>
>>
> There is a website for the 160nl. It includes "how to flash with
> DD-WRT" and from the FAQ:-
> "112. How can I revert back to the original Linksys firmware for
> WRT160NL (revert to stock firmware)?
> **** Download
> http://downloads.linksysbycisco.com/...01.17_code.bin
> (or visit http://linksysbycisco.com/EU/en/supp...160NL/download)
> and go in DD-WRT to Administration tab - Firmware upgrade, and just
> browse and upload the original stock firmware. Remember, cable
> connection only, everything connected to the power network,
> preferably to a UPS." <http://www.wrt160nl.org/>

Bob wrote:
> On 08/06/2010 14:41, jch wrote:
>> FAQ #112 doesn't refer to reverting to back to original firmware
>> from DDWRT or from any 3rd party firmware.
>>
>
> What do you perceive this referring to?
> "go in DD-WRT to Administration tab - Firmware upgrade, and just
> browse and upload the original stock firmware."

Sorry. Somehow I didn't see that line when I initially looked at this
section.

Thank you. I was never clear on why the various pre-image, prep, and kill
files needed to be loaded first. I thought somehow that precluded a return
to the Linksys firmware. I've now loaded and begun to play around with the
DD-WRT 14311 beta for the Linksys 160NL router. There's a feature present
in the micro generic version of 13064 (which I'm using on my WRT54Gv5.1
configured as a wireless bridge) which is not included on the later 14311
firmware - at least I can't find it. It gives the ability to automatically
shut on/off the router radio based on time of day. For example, I wanted to
shut down the wireless portion of my 160NL between say 12am and 6am. I can
do that with the 13064 firmware but not the 14311 - again unless I'm missing
it.

Other than issues like that, the 160NL seems to be comfortably running
DD-WRT. There are dozens of goodies which aren't defined in the help pages
which I'm unsure about. Guess I'll keep playing. Maybe later I'll try some
of the other mods possible with resident scripts.


Jeff Liebermann wrote:
>
> There are no prep and kill steps for the WRT160NL. What you're
> referring to is the VxWorks killer, which replaces the CPE (boot
> loader) with one that will load anything, instead of just the approved
> VxWorks bin file. That's not necessary with the WRT160NL. Please
> make sure that you're reading the correct procedure as different model
> routers have radically different steps.
>
> The pre-image ordeal process is designed to circumvent a problem with
> the stock Linksys firmware that limits the maximum size of the image.
> DD-WRT is somewhat larger than the stock firmware and will not load
> using the fireware update process from the stock firmware. So, it
> becomes a two step process. A smaller image is first installed
> (linksys-to-ddwrt-firmware.bin). Once that's working, the larger
> running image (wrt160nl-firmware.bin) can safely be installed. There's
> no problem going back to the smaller stock Linksys firmware from
> DD-WRT because DD-WRT doesn't have the image size problem.
>
> However, if you do decide to go back to the stock Linksys firmware,
> and then decide to load DD-WRT again, you'll have to go through the
> two step process again.
>
> Where it does get complexicated is setting up an external flash drive,
> printing, Bitorrent, Samba, and some customization.
> <http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/WRT160NL>
> Note that these are optional and do not affect the basic operation of
> DD-WRT. If you read the tutorial at:
> <http://wrt160nl.org/files/wrt160nlmod.pdf>
> only the very first step "Installing DD-WRT" is required to install
> DD-WRT and get it running. The rest are all the modifications which
> do NOT need to be un-done in order to revert to the stock firmware.