Flashing DLink DSL-524T and DSL-G624T with OpenWRT 14.07

DLink DSL-524T was my first experience with a router that was able to connect to the Internet using OpenWRT. Its integrated DSL modem is fully support under OpenWRT. Later I bought DLink DSL-G624T which has the same hardware specs as DSL-524 but with an integrated wireless mini-pci card which is while supported offers no WPA/WPA2 encryption, only WEP which is insecure.

Both work great under OpenWRT 10.03.1 but not under 12.09 which feels slower. While 14.07 feels snappier, it consumes all the 4MB of flash memory.

Well, today I've got some time to build a lightweight OpenWRT 14.07 for both DSL-524T and DSL-G624T.

The installation steps are documented for both.

As reference, these are the steps I did for DLink G624T.

# under root or using sudo

echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_frto

# just a second or two after the router is powered up

ftp -n 192.168.1.199

user adam2

# adam2 as a password also

quote "SETENV mtd1,0x90010000,0x903f0000"

binary

hash

quote MEDIA FLSH

put "openwrt-ar7-generic-squashfs.bin" "openwrt-ar7-generic-squashfs.bin mtd1"

quote REBOOT

bye

 
Notes: While both DSL-524T and DSL-G624T ran OK under 14.07 you should go easy with LuCi as 16MB of ram is really the minimum requirement. After setting things up consider disabling LuCi for better performance. A /etc/init.d/luci disable would suffice.

A USB-to-UART (USB-to-TTL) cable is not necessary but  would be helpful in case you want to know what happens while flashing it or setting it up.

Red is GND, Green is RX and White is TX

Usually you need to setup CuteCom or Putty to 38400 baud, 8 bit, no parity, 1 stop bit. Serial (/dev/ttyUSB0)