Yes. It helps keep me out of trouble. But it's an awfully large file. Mine is currently 350k, but the most recent version is over 500k.
Yes, but it would be a whole bunch of entries.
Thanks for the confession. :-) As I understand it, the Buffalos are more complicated to flash because the firmware images are supposed to be encrypted. So you can't use the built-in stock flashing option to flash DD-WRT (because it's expecting an encrypted file). And for the same reason, you can't use the built-in DD-WRT flashing option - assuming there is one - to re-flash the stock firmware (because its expecting a non-encrypted file). Hence the need for TPTF, as you say, both ways.
Well, I knew I hadn't imagined all those "brick" reports. There appear to be more of them for Buffalos than for Linksys, and since there are probably far fewer of the former in the population, the difference is even more striking. I've seen somewhere a report that the Buffalo people are seeing too many bricked routers come back from attempted DD-WRT flashings. Well, that's their own fault if you ask me - all that silly encryption. You know, the Buffalo firmware source is available from their site. I guess that's because they use Linux and other open-source components, and have to make it available. But then, why the encryption?
But at this point I have a wired desktop and a wireless laptop, and both can get to the internet, and both can see and sync with each other, all with the stock firmware. So long as that works well, and so long as I don't need VPN or something equally fancy, I'll probably stick with the stock firmware.
It would be nice, though, if someone could break the Buffalo encryption. That should make the flashing a lot more reliable, because then you could make an encrypted version of DD-WRT, and an unencrypted version of the stock. Then all the critical timing issues go away.