Obtaining administrator access on Huawei HG8247H

Hardware / Technology   / / / / 24 Comments

My ISP upgraded my connection from VDSL to fiber and gave me new hardware to go with it – the Huawei HG8247H GPON. However, as I am already using a fully configured DDWRT-ed router for all my networking tasks, I needed to turn the Huawei into a media converter and pass the static IP to my second router – not the easiest task as it appears.

The Huawei my ISP uses comes with manufacturer firmware and blank configuration so the default logins of still work, but as soon as its WAN gets connected it grabs the configuration from the ISP and the administrator login changes.

Setting up guest wireless access on Tomato

Hardware / Linux   / / / / 20 Comments

Guest wireless access is handy when you want to separate guest devices (your friends’ phones and laptops) from your own devices connected to the main network.

To get started, you need a router capable of guest wireless (not every router can do this) already set up and running either DD-WRT or Tomato. This tutorial explains how to set up a router running Tomato that is used only as access point (WAN is disabled/unplugged).

Rooting the nJoy Devi B700 tablet

Hardware / Technology   / / / / / 2 Comments

The nJoy Devi B700 is a budget tablet, running Android 4.2.2 on a dual-core Actions ATM7021 at 1.2Ghz and 1 Gb of RAM; other specs are 8 Gb of storage and a 7 in. screen.

It seems to be using the same firmware – gs702c – as a P706 tablet, one that is a bit more heard of on the internet, so the same method of rooting works.

Maximizing Netgear WNDR4500v2 functionality with DD-WRT (USB, FTP, Samba, TFTP, Printer sharing)

Hardware / Linux   / / / / / / / 8 Comments

The Negear WNDR4500v2 router is quite a beefy piece of hardware with advanced firmware, including plenty of features even for a maniac user like me.

I would most likely not have replaced it from day 1 however if it had one more feature that I absolutely needed: TFTP/PXE/BootP options for the DHCP server. There is where DD-WRT comes in…

WD hard drives jumper settings and SATA 1.5 Gbps limit

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Hard disk jumpers where a necessary nuisance in the IDE/(P-)ATA days. Jumpers made the difference between a functional and a non-functional hard drive.
Fortunately, they disappear in the S-ATA age. Well, almost… While totally unnecessary nowadays, jumpers are still needed to fiddle modern S-ATA drives to make them compatible with some early SATA implementations motherboards.

Setting up Tenda N3 as wireless repeater

Hardware   / / / / 4 Comments

I recently purchased a Tenda N3 (micro) wireless router to use as a wireless extender in the house. Since it took me about an hour to figure out how to pair it up with my main WRT54GL wireless router, I decided to write this short how-to guide.

The Tenda N3 is a cute little thing, small enough to tuck away and forget it’s even there.

BIOS Error Codes

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AMIBIOS is a kind of BIOS manufactured by American Megatrends (AMI).

AwardBIOS is a kind of BIOS manufactured by Award, now owned by Phoenix Technologies.

Several custom implementations of the PhoenixBIOS system exist in many popular motherboards. The beep codes from a Phoenix-based BIOS may be exactly the same as the true Phoenix beep codes or they may vary.

Raspberry PI as NAS

Hardware / Linux   / / / / 6 Comments

A friend of mine was wondering about using a Raspberry PI as a NAS, the question being: how fast is the PI at file transfers from/to an external hard disk connected via a USB rack.

So I booted up my PI, mounted some random 3.5 inch Samsung 160GB SATA hard drive inside another random Spire USB-SATA external (powered) rack and gave it a go at some testing.

Upgrading the SD card used on WRT54GL v1.1 running dd-wrt

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If you’ve done the SD card mod on WRT54GL, you might at some point change it with a bigger / faster card. You could just replace the SD card with a bigger one, but then you’d have to install/re-configure everything set up on it (like Optware stuff). […]