Hi all,

I have a couple of ZyXEL 2602-D1A routers here. I am hoping to get OpenWRT working on them. They're pretty nice, AR7 with 32MB flash and 32MB RAM. They also have two voice channels for connecting POTS phones for VOIP, so an asterisk setup could be interesting if I get them working.

Anyway, I've run OpenWRT before, but not on AR7 hardware. I've heard that OpenWRT has been run on ZyXEL's 660HW router, but found no information on how. Essentially, my problem is that ZyXEL's firmware images seem to have an identifying header. I've pretty much figured out the variable parts of it, but there's a two-byte number (probably a checksum of some sort) that I don't know how to calculate. This precludes ftp/tftp/web firmware uploads. The wiki points to a site describing how to upgrade the firmware through a serial console. I tried that (the 660HW "dangerous-command" password calculator seems to work for this router too), but after sending an OpenWRT image through XModem, I get:

Total  1468672 bytes received.
File signature error!!

So, BootBase itself seems to also check for this header.

What I want to know is if anyone here has run OpenWRT on a ZyXEL, and can tell me how to make bootbase play nice. Are there any other methods I could try to get new firmware in there other than building a JTAG cable?

Of course, any other info (if someone knows how that checksum is calculated, for example) would also be appreciated.

Cheers,
David

Hi,

Sorry to resurrect an old post, but I've been doing some similar stuff to you that I thought you'd like to know about.

You can find the layout of ZyXEL firmware headers, as well as how to upload a non-firmware image, here:
http://www.ixo.de/info/zyxel_uclinux/

(This wasn't me, but I found it very useful.)

.. basically, if you upload the boot image directly to the booting address (as displayed by ATSH) using the 'ATUP' command, it should bypass the 'ATUR' firmware upload mechanism and should just work (hopefully.)

(The model he's using is running an ARM chip but the bootloader works the same way as my 2602HWL-61C, here.)

He also provides some checksum algorithms if you wanted to roll your own firmware, although you have a newer BootBase version so the algorithms it uses may be different.

Also, I was wondering if I could please ask for some info about the 2602-D1A (all from the debug console):

- Output of ATSH command
- Output of ATMP command
- What Wireless chip does it use? Is it still on a MiniPCI daughterboard?

Thanks heaps!

- Angus