Hi all,

Minitar wireless products are sold in Australia - in particular the MNWAPB has been very popular - a small-size access point that runs Linux with a reasonable Edimax radio (18dB TX power).  An effort was underway to develop a distro for the RTL8181 was underway http://rtl8181.sourceforge.net/, but the MNWAPB was discontinued.

Minitar have now released the MNWAPG http://www.epct.com.tw/product_info.php … cts_id=904 - the 802.11g successor to the MNWAPB.  It has the same nice features as the MNWAPG - small size, cheap, good radio, runs linux - but Minitar has now released a version with 16MB SDRAM.  It still only has 2MB of flash memory, but we've seen you can do useful things with 2MB of flash memory and OpenWRT.

Why am I posting this to the OpenWRT forum?  Because Minitar have publicly called for suggestions as to what should go into future versions of the MNWAPGA firmware.  This is a link to the relevant forum topic: http://www.minitar.com/forums/index.php … 3&st=0  I think this is very interesting, especially in light of the WRT54G v5 not running linux.

Minitar products are sold internationally via http://www.epct.com.tw/

Releasing the sources would help alot.  Routers based on the rtl8186 are quite numerous nowadays, and all of them have the same basic designs.  Unfortunately, Realtek is making sure that nobody releases the sources onto the web like they are supposed to.  If openwrt could be made to run on these, it would provide a fully functional below cost AP's (most of these G routers are below cost of the WRT).

As I understand it, Realtek are not releasing the sources for the drivers for their WLAN radios or CPUs.  This is the same situation as for Broadcom-based routers.  I don't believe they are legally bound to release the sources for their proprietary hardware - the GPL doen't say all sources must be released, only sources that have previously been released under the GPL must be released.

Broadcom radios are generally regarded to be pretty crappy.  And yes, people don't like the fact that their drivers aren't open source.  But these two points haven't stopped OpenWRT and other 3rd party firmwares from gaining wide popularity.  I don't see why 3rd party firmware for RTL8186-based routers can't be just as popular.  Especially since, in Australia at least, the MNWAPG is cheaper than the WRT54G.  And as I've said, the MNWAPG has a better radio and a smaller physical size.

I'm having visions of MNWAPGAs being squeezed into small, unobtrusive outdoor enclosures and being used for OLSR networks all over the place.

IMHO the key of this thing is to send a test unit to one of the developers who have some spare time to play around with it.

-w-

They do have to release modifications which they have done on the kernel though if I understand the GPL correctly.  I could care less about the other source, as I would just like to be able to generate a valid firmware/kernel (userspace stuff is trivial).  Binary drivers could be used for the wlan and eth interfaces if they never release the source for them.

Right. The most important stuff is the kernel part, userspace is really trivial most of the time.

This is true, too, but for example it's a real pain to deal with binary blobs. Anyway, a full open platform (including wireless drivers) would open up some nice options

there is a project http://rtl8180-sa2400.sourceforge.net/
have tried with several extra cheap pci and pcmcia adapters

I have a GigaFast WF719-CAPR, which is based on the reference 8186 board.
Here is the info provided by the kernel:

Linux version 2.4.18-MIPS-01.00 (root@localhost.localdomain) (gcc version 3.3.3) #183 Wed Aug 24 15:34:13 IRST 0day 00:00:13 early printk enabled
memory: 01000000 @ 00000000 (usable)
Kernel command line: root=/dev/ram console=0 ramdisk_start=0 single
Memory: 8956k/16384k available (1583k kernel code, 7428k reserved, 5332k data, 52k init, 0k highmem)
RealTek Nor-Type Flash System Driver. (C) 2002 RealTek Corp.
Found 1 x 2M Byte Intel TE28F160C3
flash: init complete (31), size 2048(KB) blks 1024 hs 512
RTL8180/RTL8185 driver version 1.6
8186NIC Ethernet driver v0.0.2
eth0:phy is 8305

More info here: http://www.bcwireless.net/moin.cgi/GigaFast_WF719-CAPR

I can get text files on it via the syscmd.asp hack, but no luck with binaries :/

Don't know if the 8180 driver could be used for the wlan chip, but even if it could, it would not support master mode.

I bought a Conceptronic C54BRS4 router 1 month ago. It has a RTL8186 inside. I send an email to Conceptronic complainig about the source code, and they published in their website. It is the C54BRS4 Version 2.0 (vesion 1.0 is based in an ADM chip). You can download it from here:

http://www.conceptronic.net/site/Deskto … p;tabid=17

It also has the toolchain inside. I have compiled it succesfully, but I haven't uploaded it yet. I also have a succesfull conection to the router by the serial port. You can read my experience here:

http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php? … _id=338328

Hope this has been usefull.

The complete URL to download the source code:

http://download.tulip.com/support/conce … 1g-GPL.tgz

or

ftp://ftp.tulip.com/support/conceptroni … 1g-GPL.tgz

Looks good.  My goal is to generate the web area firmware, adding a wget binary.  This would allow for the testing of binaries without doing a flash each time you want to test a new one.  The C54BRS4 looks to be almost the same, firmware wise to the WF719-CAPR (judging from the boot log).  Unlike the Zyxel P330-W, which uses an mtd device as root, these two put everything into ram and go from there.

There is an even larger file in the directory:
http://download.tulip.com/support/conce … E_CODE.zip
Server seems very slow, maybe this will contain the missing parts of the above file.

I just got a version of this little router; I can access the commands though the hidden pages, etc. I have some experience in the past compiling some utilities for the WRT54G.

Can someone tell me how would I go at porting a basic openwrt to it? Basic instructions or pointers to start with would be helpful.

Thx.

i have a dwl-g700ap it use the rtl8186 chip. this is a serial(ttl) and jtag on it.

If you still interest in Linux based firmware for this device feel free to look at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/rtl8186/