First "Fun with Morse Code" Inter highschool Contest photos

A used Netgear router from a surplus shop: Eye Candy?

If the younger generation have their cellphone, tablet and gadget shops, I would much ratehr enjoy a good browse at used electronic goods surplus shop.  I saw this old router at one shop in Cubao, Quezon City and found it was a G router model VPN824 v.2.  It had what looked like a blue plastic brand badge on the top.  I asked the shopkeeper to plug it in (110v), and the front panel lamps did their self-test cycle and everything looked normal. I took out my android phone did a WIFI scan and found a strong signal. What was unusual about this old router is the way an array of blue LEDs were flashing in the "Netgear" translucent badge.  It reminded me of flashing disco lights. Eye Candy!  I tried to haggle but the shopkeeper was an old pro.  In the end, I plunked down some cash and took it home.

Upon getting home, I wasted no time hooking it up, using a conventional 12v (not switching) DC adaptor I had and got it working on the LAN.  I could not get WIFI access, though.  I noticed on the router setup page that indeed it had firmware for the North American market. The WIFI channel was permanently set to 6.  In may desire to be able to adjust the WIFI channel, I thought of changing the firmware. So I went to Netgear's site and got the international firmware.

Halfway through the "firmware upgrade process" I lost connection to the router.  "I bricked it!", I said to myself.  The Test lamp was flashing. The internet indicator lamp was off. No access!  Bummer!

I connected the desktop straight into the modem and started googling for solutions for the problem.  [Not many may realize it but this is the greatest virtue of the internet: the free sharing of human knowledge and experience.]

It seems I was not the only guy who has had a similar problem.  What is interesting is that guy had used a Mac and I had used a linux machine.  I saw another post that admonishes not to use OS besides Windows to upgrade the firmware.  And I remember when I tried to upagrade, I did not remove the internet connection and close all other tabs on the browser.  And with a facebook tab still on. there would be an attempt for the FB app to use the internet (on its own) and possible this more than anything elese accounted for the failure of the upgrade process yielding a bad firmware.  And there was a warning not to attempt to go online, during the process.  Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!

A good hour after I started my panic search for a solution, I saw some instructions or doing a hard reset on netgear router involving some 30-second long presses on the reset button on the back panel.  I did that and noticed a faster blink rate on the Test lamp. This was predicted by the guy who posted the reset procedure, if ever the reset was successfully done. Bouyed by this partial success, I following his other instructions.  Apparently at his stage the router was ready to accept temporary firmware by a method called TFTP. I downloaded a small windows based TFTP executable program which I used to upload a copy of the original North American software.

The upgrade looked successful! With fingers crossed and some trepidation I powered the router off and waited 10 seconds before powering it up again.

Success!  LAN operation was ok. I even got the WiFi working.  I fashioned a "stand" from a cut-up Heinz ketchup PET bottle to steady the router when vertically oriented (standing on its side, as in the picture above but without the factory supplied stand accessory) as suggested by the manual.

Further reading (It seems "reading the manual" comes always last!) taught me that the flashing blue LEDs were actually indicator lamps for the seven (that is right, seven!) built-in antennas that were used in a "space diversity" system. My general understanding is, the array of antennas and or receivers are continuously scanned for the best data throughput. The multiple antenna, space even a few centimeters apart work together to lessen the effect of fading compared to say, if only one antenna were used.  I believe they call it MIMO (multiple input, multiple output).

If I had thought the array of flashing "disco" blue lights was cool, this technology of MIMO as indicated by those lights is way "cooler"!

I remember saying to the shopkeeper (while I was trying to haggle for a better price) that I was going to use the router for my experiments  and really just play around with it..  Sometimes , indeed, one really gets what one bargains for!  The excitement,  disappointment, struggle, and sometimes redemption! And you learn new stuff, to boot!                                   73   Ramon DU1FV

Eventually try again to upgrade to international firmware?  Maybe, one day soon (on a PC).  But this is enough excitement for one day.