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Brickable?Brickable?Posted Jun 30, 2008 15:37 UTC (Mon) by endecotp (guest, #36428)In reply to: Brickable? by Tuxie Parent article: Netgear's open wireless-G router for open source hackers
> What I'd like to see is a completely unbrickable router platform ... > What is needed is a router with a REAL "reset to factory defaults" > button, that restores ALL flashable components and CMOS to a re-flashable > state, nothing excluded. That means that you need about twice as much flash as you would otherwise have, which is unrealistic on cost grounds in most markets (though I do know of some more "professional" devices that work that way). What is possible, however, is to have a small bootloader that isn't easily overwritten. The NSLU2 has a version of RedBoot for this. When started up with a button held down in a particular way [so you need the $ for at least one button!] this bootloader listens on the network for instructions to write to the flash. Even if you write garbage, you can still repeat the process.
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Brickable? Posted Jun 30, 2008 18:36 UTC (Mon) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link] Whether or not you need twice as much flash depends on how capable the factory image is. If the factory image is just a bootloader, and pretty dang generic, you can do it with a small amount of ROM. In fact, the AT91SAM7 series does that whole thing on chip (it's got a USB bootloader in the chip's ROM, and if you assert the "erase" pin, it clears the flash and runs that bootloader). If the USB and that pin are accessible, you pretty much can't brick it except by damaging the chips. It doesn't really work if you want a locked-down device, since the bootloader won't enforce signed-image requirements, and it wouldn't work for users who want their hardware to route packets out of the box, but it'd be fine for this sort of device.
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