Motorola WA840G v1 only .... replacement firmware instructions

This is for peeps searching on the WA840G, trying to solve Wireless Bridging or Client Bridge issues

Configuring Motorola WA840G with OpenWrt to use as a client bridge

After being incredibly frustrated with Motorola's manufacturers firmware, both from usability (terrible and complicated web interface) and reliability (it's not capable of doing what is says on the tin), I stumbled across a couple of replacement firmware's, not specifically for the WA840G, but for quite a few wireless networking devices.

After doing a bit of reading it appeared no one had dd-wrt running on the WA840G, however there were very brief install instructions for the openwrt project What version do I have?

There were also comments about there being two versions of the WA840G, the first having a larger flash ROM of 4MB, and version two, only having 2MB. The possible issue being that the new open source firmware's won't fit in 2MB of ROM and could brick your device

I have not yet accurately determined how to tell this. My device is mid grey, and does not have Version 1 or 2 marked anywhere. I know there is a black version of the WA840G, perhaps this is version 2 of the device?

Regardless, I was so feed up with the WA840G that if attempting to flash, killed it, so be it. I would buy a Linksys and be done with it.

Installing

As I upgraded from Motorola's latest firmware 6.1.4) avail from

you are following these instructions, I suggest you start with the same.

I used the smaller of the two available images from the latest avail release RC5, 27 March 2006.

I was hoping that even if I had a version 2 device, because the firmware is less than 2MB, that the device would survive. I then used the currently installed Motorola web interface to flash the image fine.

Wait a minute or two (DO NOT TURN OF THE POWER!) for the device to flash. You will see the LAN light start flashing red / green. In my case the device came back up with the same IP that I had set in the Motorola firmware. There are also suggestions that it could come back as the default 192.168.40.1/24 or even 192.168.10.1/24

Configuring

In my case I wanted to use the device as a client bridge. The new web interface is very clean, if a little slow. Once configured however, it flies! The first time you will be asked to set a password. Do this, as we need SSH access below.

Because I wanted to use WPA, an additional module needs to be installed. SSH into the IP for the web interface, login as root and the password above.

Make sure the box has Internet access (I just plugged it into my router, with the gateway / dns set to it).

Now in the web interface you can set to use WPA encryption etc

That's it! Note that the Wireless light no longer works .. the only prob I have found so far

Afternote: Once I had the replacement firmware installed, I could tell that I have a version 1 device,

root@OpenWrt:~# cat /proc/cpuinfo system type : Broadcom BCM947XX processor : 0 cpu model : BCM4710 V0.0 BogoMIPS : 82.94

Hope this helps someone S