Yep that's about it.  Look around on web for pinout it's easy enough.  Half the serial-USB widgets out there are PL2303.

I royally screwed up being the stupid person I am, and decided to try compiling this and uploading via the web interface.  I think I bricked my router.... The power led keeps blinking... but switching must be working because I can still connect to my other computers when they have static ip addresses.  Is there any way to unbrick this without using the jtag?  I don't know anything about what cable, how to connect it, etc, and I am stupid.

Ok...Maybe a stupid question here. But I only got 3 wires when I clipped the end of the CA-42. I did find TX and RX by tying 2 together and did local echo tests in minicom. It comes back with    tteesstt   

Should I have 4 wires? Ground and 3.3V?

Thanks,

- SMiTTY

Don't worry about 3.3V.

When using a USB to serial converter, it's powered from the USB bus, so you only need TX, RX, and gnd.

I tested and the currently downloadable snapshots do not include wireless functionality.
Example tested was August 15th image.

Snapshots that I built myself work fine.  So something in way buildbot does it's thing.

3 wires are sufficient. Orange is GND, RX and TX you already got. Here you go http://nanl.de/blog/2009/07/linksys-wrt160nl/

Hi all,

I have serious problems getting a serial connection to my WRT160NL. I got a CA-42 clone cable from ebay with a pl2303 in it. I tried the following wiring with no success:

Nokia Pin | Router Pin
6 - 2
7 - 3
8 - 5

I used the following configuration with both Hyper Terminal and Putty:

Speed: 115200
Bits: 8
Stop Bits: 1
Parity: None
Flow Control: None

Sometimes I get some cryptic text (but not very often). For two times I got appropriate router ouput but no input and only for a non soldered connection.

Do you have any idea what's going on? How likely is it that i damaged some ic on the pcb (I switched Nokia Pins 6 and 7 once)? The cable should be fine (I bought a second one in the meantime to be sure it's ok)

thanks for your help and best regards,
David

Make sure your cable is short, like 18 inches or less.  I don't believe there is significant danger of damage just from getting pins wrong.  Did you read back further in this thread?  Back on page 2 at least my CA-42 the pins were what amounted to on the PCB end 2 (white), 4 ( blue) , and 6 (black).  I traced them using a multimeter from the pin numbers on the connector to the PCB after cracking open the USB shell.  In my case I had initial confusion that the Nokia POP-port cable the first visible pin is pin#2, the diagrammed pin#1 is not present and is way to left of the attachment clip.

My example seems twitchy that sometimes my PC doesn't even recognize the device or gives me baud rate eror or something.  Then I unplug and replug the USB and it works fine.  I dunno don't have a second one to test against.

(Last edited by vincentfox on 24 Aug 2009, 19:35)

Hi Vincent,

thx for the fast answer. I just opened the connector of my CA-42 cable and assumed the Pins are in ascending order according to this link:
http://www.hardwarebook.info/Pop-Port

The Pins were not explicitly labelled but according to the above link i think the following interpretation *should* be correct shouldn't it? (white: Pin 6, green: Pin 7, gnd: Pin 8)
http://www.schmelly.de/files/screenshots.pdf

I just cut off the connector and connected the white, green and gnd cables to Pin 2, 3 and 5 on the Router (I didn't touch the usb shell). My cable is quite short at the moment (less than 12 inches).

I hope this approach makes somewhat sense

Ummm no.  Go look at diagram top left of this page:

http://pinouts.ru/CellularPhones-Nokia/ … nout.shtml

Every POP port connector I have seen, has no pin at what would be the pin#1 location.
This pin#1 location is to the left of the "hook".  So what you see on the cable as first
pin is perhaps actually pin#2 and you may be off by 1.  Clear now?

Mine mapped out as white, blue, and black wires but I'm not sure that
all cables are made with same color standard.

Once I cracked open the USB shell on my CA-42 it was labelled "DKU-5B".
Yours may have some markings on it to help confirm.

(Last edited by vincentfox on 24 Aug 2009, 21:19)

I counted the first "solderable" Pin of the connector as Pin 2 already. If you take a look at my second photo this means the black wire is connected to Pin 3 (ACI, according to the diagram you linked) and the red one to Pin 4 (VOut). Pins 2, 5 and >8 are not connected at all.

I opened the usb shell and as expected there is a label like "V-DKU-5-0(V2.0)" (It was a nightmare to open since everything was cast in plastic). The serial converter ic is a PL 2303HX. Unfortunately the actual solder joints are not labelled (everything else are smd parts). I can provide photos tomorrow as well.

<sarcasm> Thanks for the help.  </sarcasm>

Specto, either you can read this thread and others and sort out how to buy a US $5 Nokia DKU-5 or CA-42 cable off EBay and connect up 3 wires or you cant.  If you can't I wouldn't recommend playing around with flashing new firmwares that may brick your router.   If you really can't fix it, then PM me and I will give you my address.  You can mail me the router and $5 for the cable, and I'll volunteer to hook up serial for you and mail it back.

The Atheros platforms do not seem to have a rescue mode like TFTP boot_wait on the Broadcom platforms, so working serial console is essential tool if you are going to muck about with trunk firmware.  With serial it's a matter of seconds to abort the boot and type "upgrade code.bin", and within a couple of minutes all is well.

try portscanning the router

Has anyone tried using a Cisco console adapter? I wonder if this one would work for getting serial access through the RJ45 port? Cisco DB9 Female to RJ45 Female Console Adapter

No that won't work.  The standard "Cisco console adapter" is just serial cabled into RJ45 jack.  Tons of rack-mount servers are setup in similar way.  They use the standard RJ-45 connector and plug but map the pins out for serial port.  It's nice and compact which matters in racks.

The "console" pins present on the Atheros-series router boards, are not in the standard RJ-45 pin locations they are on the opposite side along the PCB.  Hence you need a hacked solution.  The edge pins are probably primarily a factory convenience, and perhaps for developers.  I suspect that factory testing of the boards could clamp onto the edge of the PCB with a specialized machine and look for boot-messages as part of QA/QC before they head out the door.  The developers at Atheros, CyberTan, etc. may also have custom-made connectors for this job and just not be sharing them with the outside world.  So far nobody has seen an "official" one.

Here's the board photos. Is J3 a serial header? I know that with solid telephone wire inserted into the holes of the Micro JTAG spot at J2 and into the corresponding spots on your JTAG cable will work nicely for a JTAG connection. The telephone wire fits the Micro JTAG holes perfectly. Similar on the WRT300N IIRC.

Mordak, read back earlier in the thread.  Yes J3 is another serial header location.

what do I need to select in menuconfig for the wrrt160nl? I've selected the ar71 platform and then the wrt160nl profile. I'm assuming that this would give me a working system,  i.e. working switch, wireless & usb, correct? also would it come with everything else a generic build come with by default, such as iptables, etc? I'm a noob when it comes to compiling so be forgive me if I said something dense

Thanks to everyone for their good work towards supporting this capable little box

Now that I've attempted to compile I can answer my own question.
Yes, what's in a generic build like dnsmasq, iptables, etc, seems to be selected. Must be set by the wrt160nl profile?
Not sure if luci is in there, it's still running make, 1h30mins on ubuntu 9.04 (in vmware) and its still going. I'd imagine compiling straight from linux rather than a vm would be 2x as fast.

The WRT160NL profile is needed for WiFi to work.   Beyond that I don't need luci and nearly everything can be added with opkg later.   I can see trying to cram everything into the original squashfs build if you have small flash but the WRT160NL has plenty so seems somewhat waste of time.

If I understand correctly, the WRT160NL profile does not exist yet ?
Did anyone got the wifi to work ?
Thank you

You don't understand corretly, profile exist, see trunk. Wifi is working, even at 130 Mbps (says client, did not measured the bandwidth yet).

Ok, thank you,
So there is no build for it.
I cannot build image myself, so I should wait then ?
I am a good tester throw... :-)

daily snapshot builds at http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ar71xx/
particularly http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/ … uashfs.bin