Hi,

I wonder if there is such an emulator to load any firmware. For instance, I have some U.S. Robotics 5461 WiFi Routers with a built-in USB 2.0 Printer Server port. The Table of Hardware listed this device as Untested. Also, there is no posts/docs that I can read to give me a go signal to try flashing my unit with the OpenWRT and/or any open source WRT firmwares. I don't want to find out from a hard way that flashing the OpenWRT firmware will brick my U.S. Robotics 5461. I am hoping there is an emulator that will be able to load both the OpenWRT and the U.S. Robotics 5461 firmwares for a comparison in term of memory addressing used for the booting process, etc. Anyone?

(Last edited by pap2boy on 15 Dec 2005, 01:41)

Not really.  The best way is to equip yourself with a jtag cable, a level-converting serial cable and backup images for your software, especially the NVRAM and CFE.  These tools will allow you to recover any development 'bricks' you may create...

I can easily make this JTAG cable. However, the problem with this approach is I really don't know which one is a serial port (No manual/post/doc/guide to show what a serial port look like on the board); however, this U.S. Robotics 5461 does come with a USB 2.0 port. Can this USB port be used instead of a serial port with a JTAG cable? Will connecting any PINs through a JTAG cable to a serial port of a computer won't damage the unit and will also reveal something before I proceed to flash my unit with the OpenWRT firmware?

Also, how does one go about to backup the original firmware? Can a copy of the original firmware downloaded from the U.S. Robotics site be good enough?