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MINITAR ACCESS POINT
* Minitar Access Point [1]
* News [2]
* Where to Buy [3]
* Hardware [4]
* Minitar Specifications [5]
* Peripherals [6]
* Images [7]
* Firmware [8]
* Memory [9]
* EJTAG [10]
* Software [11]
* Serial Console [12]
* Boot [13]
* Reboot [14]
* Root console [15]
* Questions [16]
* Does somebody has the BDSL def file? [17]
* Can somebody gave the FCC-ID of this AP? Apparently it\'s being
approved and will get one for sale in the US of A. [18]
* Is the binary wireless driver supports ad-hoc mode? Can you double
check? [19]
-------------------------
As with Linksys WRT54G, the Minitar's firmware is based around linux.
NEWS
* Some notes about the software after spending about a month with the
source are in MinitarHacking [20]. (2004-09-28)
* The older firmware source code [21] is available on this website.
(2004-03-04)
* Minitar's OEM appears to be Edimax [22]. Product Link [23].
(2003-11-08)
* Mitch from perthwireless has discovered a working password for the
busybox login prompt (6-11-03)
* Minitar say they will now produce source for the GPL'd code in
these units. (23-10-03)
* Minitar has now released the source that they recieved from
realtek. (25-10-03)
* The kernel archive they've releasead seems to be missing a number
of important .c files the drivers for the CPU, wifi, and rom chips
particularly
* A new Linux RTL8181 Sourceforge project has started here [24].
This has a good table of RTL8181 based products. (2-3-04)
WHERE TO BUY
EYO [25] (Sydney)
Warcom [26] (Melbourne)
PCRange [27] (Adelaide)
Freenet Antennas [28] (Perth, Ship anywhere)
Jamie Moir - not always [29]
Add others please.
HARDWARE
MINITAR SPECIFICATIONS
CPU Realtek RTL8181 [30] (200MHz MIPS) Flash 1 MB NOR Flash RAM ICSI
IC42S164007T [31] 8 MB SDRAM Antenna RP-SMA Detachable Antenna x 1
Transmit Power 18 dBm Power 12V DC, 0.5A Linear Power Adaptor
Dimension 30(H)*127(W)*96(D) mm
Actually there is 2Meg of flash but as far as I can tell the first is
taken up with the primary firmware code. (btcode)
You can get the Realtek RTL8181 pinout and register data sheet by
asking djongdjong_goh@winedge.com.sg nicely.
You can now find the RTL8181 datasheet here [32] (thanks to andrewg,
nevyn JTAG, dual PCI, 16 digital I/O, 32MB SDRAM) Flash MX29LV160AB
[35] 2 MB NOR Flash RAM ICSI IC42S164007T [36] 8 MB SDRAM (room for
more, see U8) Ethernet 2 x RTL3129 internal MACs (eth0 only, missing
PHY and isolation transformer for eth1 but it could be manually added
on.) JTAG JP1 (pin layout soon) Serial J1 (see below) Radio SA2400
[37] The data sheet is hard to get so please post a link to a PDF if
you find one.
You can now download the SA2400A datasheet [38].
SAW Filter (G W22 B004D) Unknown brand. 2.4GHz Bandpass filter.
IMAGES
(Some higher resolution pictures [39] are available.)
FIRMWARE
New firmware (2.20 [40]) was released with some additional features.
One can unpack the contents with this script (thanks to Mihnea)
#!/bin/bash #-- START wget
http://www.minitar.com/downloads/MIN2APB_2.20.zip unzip -jo
MIN2APB_2.20.zip dd if=general-ap_upg_2.20.bin bs=1 skip=12
count=$((0x18000)) | zcat ->webpages-ap.bin dd
if=general-ap_upg_2.20.bin bs=1 skip=$((12+0x18000)) | zcat
->vmlinux_img dd if=vmlinux_img bs=1 count=$((0x166000)) >kcoff dd
if=vmlinux_img bs=1 skip=$((0x166000)) |zcat ->tmpimg.img rm -f
vmlinux_img #-- END
Script modified for version 2.32 of the firmware.
#!/bin/bash ZIPFILE=Minitar_AP_Firmware_2.32.zip
FIRMWARE=general-ap_upg_2.32_8m.bin
DOWNLOADSITE="http://www.minitar.com/downloads/" #-- START wget
"$DOWNLOADSITE$ZIPFILE" unzip -jo $ZIPFILE dd if=$FIRMWARE bs=1
skip=12 count=$((0x18000)) | zcat ->webpages-ap.bin dd if=$FIRMWARE
bs=1 skip=$((12+0x18000)) | zcat ->vmlinux_img dd if=vmlinux_img bs=1
count=$((0x16d000)) >kcoff dd if=vmlinux_img bs=1 skip=$((0x16d000))
|zcat ->tmpimg.img rm -f vmlinux_img #-- END
"You will get 3 files: webpages-ap.bin (the web pages), kcoff (the
kernel binary, probably in ECOFF format) and tmpimg.img (the initrd).
"
I have some doubt about the kernel binary that this procedure
returns. it has far too many 0's at the start for my liking.
Mount it:
mount -t ext2 -o loop tmpimg.img /mnt/floppy -o
ro,nodev,nosuid,noexec
directory listing MinitarLs [41]
MEMORY
Unpopulated component U8 looks to be space for a second SDRAM IC.
Related components around U8 seem to be populated, so it wont be too
hard to add more ram to your minitar.
I will try this out when I get mine running again.
The RTL8181 supports 1 bank of 32bit ram or 2 banks of 16bit ram. The
IC42S164007T is a 64Mbit / 16bit device, adding another to U8 would be
very straight forward.
EJTAG
With the help of the late release of the RTL8181 datasheet, we
noticed the controller supports EJTAG, the interface seems to be wired
to JP1.
The JTAG interface is not normally active, JTAG CLK doubles as the
WLAN activity led indicator (LED2?) - some jumpers need to be set to
disable WLAN activity overflow: auto; border: 1px solid; padding:
3px;">
UART1 output test ok Uart init Found 1 x 2M flash memory
---RealTek(RTL8181)at .... ... 7 11:22:57 CST 2003 version 1.0 no sys
signature at 00010000! Jump to image start=0x80300000... display on
entering boot loader, turning on display decompressing kernel:
Uncompressing Linux... done, booting the kernel. done decompressing
kernel. Linux version 2.4.18-MIPS-01.00 (root@localhost.localdomain)
(gcc version 3.0.3) #2 Fri Aug 22 00:02:09 CST 2003 Determined
physical RAM map: memory: 00800000 @ 00000000 (usable) Initial ramdisk
at: 0x80166000 (405253 bytes) On node 0 totalpages: 2048 zone(0): 2048
pages. zone(1): 0 pages. zone(2): 0 pages. Kernel command line:
root=/dev/ram console=0 ramdisk_start=0 single Calibrating delay
loop... 204.39 BogoMIPS [47] Memory: 6104k/8192k available (1295k
kernel code, 2088k reserved, 476k data, 44k init, 0k highmem)
Dentry-cache hash table entries: 1024 (order: 1, 8192 bytes)
Inode-cache hash table entries: 512 (order: 0, 4096 bytes) Mount-cache
hash table entries: 512 (order: 0, 4096 bytes) Buffer-cache hash table
entries: 1024 (order: 0, 4096 bytes) Page-cache hash table entries:
2048 (order: 1, 8192 bytes) unavailable. POSIX conformance testing by
UNIFIX Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.4 Based upon Swansea University
Computer Society NET3.039 Initializing RT netlink socket block: 64
slots per queue, batch=16 RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of
4096K size 1024 blocksize Serial driver version 6.02 (2003-03-12) with
no serial options enabled ttyS00 at 0x00c3 (irq = 3) is a rtl_uart1
state->flags=00000000 RealTek E-Flash System Driver. (C) 2002 RealTek
Corp. Found 1 x 2MiB MXIC MX29LV160AB at 0xbfc00000 NET4: Linux TCP/IP
1.0 for NET4.0 IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP order=00000000 in rt_init
IP: routing cache hash table of 512 buckets, 4Kbytes TCP: Hash tables
configured (established 512 bind 1024) NET4: Unix domain sockets
1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0. NET4: Ethernet Bridge 008 for NET4.0
Starting kswapd RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0 Freeing
initrd memory: 395k freed VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem). Freeing
unused kernel memory: 44k freed mount /proc file system ok! serial
console detected. Disabling virtual terminals.
console=/dev/ttyS0 init started: BusyBox v0.60.1
(2003.09.16-11:50+0000) multi-call binary
BusyBox v0.60.1 (2003.09.16-11:50+0000) Built-in shell (msh) Enter
'help' for a list of built-in commands.
Initialize WLAN interface length=0? length=0? SIOCGIFFLAGS: No such
device bridge br0 doesn't exist! bridge br0 doesn't exist; can't
delete it Setup bridge... Algorithmics/MIPS FPU Emulator v1.5 device
eth1 entered promiscuous mode device wlan0 entered promiscuous mode
This is 8305SB eth1: Promiscuous mode enabled. eth1: Promiscuous mode
enabled. eth1: Promiscuous mode enabled. eth1: Promiscuous mode
enabled. SIOCDELRT: No such process SIOCDELRT: No such process br0:
port 2(wlan0) entering listening state br0: port 1(eth1) entering
listening state br0: port 2(wlan0) entering learning state br0: port
2(wlan0) entering forwarding state br0: topology change detected,
propagating br0: port 1(eth1) entering learning state br0: port
1(eth1) entering forwarding state br0: topology change detected,
propagating SIOCDELRT: No such process SIOCDELRT: No such process
udhcp server (v0.9.9-pre) started iappauth.sh: not found **********
run Diagd ********** setting: port: 31727 running in daemon mode 251
------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------
Select Exit Enter
Please enter your Name and Password
User Name :
REBOOT
The system is going down NOW !! Sending SIGTERM to all processes.
Terminated # Sending Please stand by while rebooting the system.
Restarting system. Enable Watch Dog to Reset whole system
-------------------------
ROOT CONSOLE
login: super
password: lance@edimax.com.au
you have no 'ls', so you need to 'echo *' to do useful things like
see files
# cat cpuinfo system type : Philips Nino processor : 0 cpu model :
R3000 V0.0 BogoMIPS [48] : 204.39 wait instruction : no microsecond
timers : no tlb_entries : 64 extra interrupt vector : no hardware
watchpoint : no VCED exceptions : not available VCEI exceptions : not
available ll emulations : 0 sc emulations : 0
# cat meminfo total: used: free: shared: buffers: cached: Mem:
6651904 4444160 2207744 0 61440 2338816 Swap: 0 0 0 MemTotal: 6496 kB
MemFree: 2156 kB MemShared: 0 kB Buffers: 60 kB Cached: 2284 kB
SwapCached: 0 kB Active: 636 kB Inactive: 2140 kB HighTotal: 0 kB
HighFree: 0 kB LowTotal: 6496 kB LowFree: 2156 kB SwapTotal: 0 kB
SwapFree: 0 kB
# df Filesystem 1k-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/root
1373 1317 56 96% /
# cd /proc/rtl8180/ # echo * PCI_IO ap_status bssdb rxdesc stats
status txdesc
# cat ap_status ************ wlan_sta_tbl ************ There are 0
stations in table. ************ wlan_wep_KM_tbl ************
************ wlan_macaddr_filter ************ macaddr_filter_num = 0
deny_macaddr_filter_num = 0 ************ Broadcase skb tx queue
************ wCtx->ps_brstQ.qnum = 0
# cat status ************ Current driver status ************
rtl8180_pci_driver loaded. MacAddr = 00:50:fc:d4:b1:dd ioaddr =
0xbd400000 irq = 2
-- RTL8180 Link status --
Channel number = 11 beacon period = 100 BSSID = 0x00 0x50 0xfc 0xd4
0xb1 0xdd SSID = 0x66(f) 0x7a(z) 0x6a(j) 0x2d(-) 0x77(w) 0x69(i)
0x72(r) 0x65(e) 0x6c(l) 0x65(e) 0x73(s) 0x73(s) 0x2d(-) 0x6f(o) 0
Capability = 0x00 AID = 0x00 Operational rate = Mbps
-------------------------
QUESTIONS
DOES SOMEBODY HAS THE BDSL DEF FILE?
The BSDL file hasn't been as forthcoming as the data sheet from the
rep (I have asked for it) and may never will. It's not always one of
those things that get given out without an NDA. Keep hassling Realtek.
CAN SOMEBODY GAVE THE FCC-ID OF THIS AP? APPARENTLY IT\'S BEING
APPROVED AND WILL GET ONE FOR SALE IN THE US OF A.
FWIW, there is a RTL8181-based design for a Network Everywhere
product under the FCCID of Q87-NWR11B --JerrittCollord
Also, see the linked Sourceforge project (above) for a table of
products and FCCIDs.
IS THE BINARY WIRELESS DRIVER SUPPORTS AD-HOC MODE? CAN YOU DOUBLE
CHECK?
Links:
------
[1] http://www.melbournewireless.org.au/#minitar_access_point
[2] http://www.melbournewireless.org.au/#news
[3] http://www.melbournewireless.org.au/#where_to_buy
[4] http://www.melbournewireless.org.au/#hardware
[5] http://www.melbournewireless.org.au/#minitar_specifications
[6] http://www.melbournewireless.org.au/#peripherals
[7] http://www.melbournewireless.org.au/#images
[8] http://www.melbournewireless.org.au/#firmware
[9] http://www.melbournewireless.org.au/#memory
[10] http://www.melbournewireless.org.au/#ejtag
[11] http://www.melbournewireless.org.au/#software
[12] http://www.melbournewireless.org.au/#serial_console
[13] http://www.melbournewireless.org.au/#boot
[14] http://www.melbournewireless.org.au/#reboot
[15] http://www.melbournewireless.org.au/#root_console
[16] http://www.melbournewireless.org.au/#questions
[17]
http://www.melbournewireless.org.au/#does_somebody_has_the_bdsl_def_file_
[18]
http://www.melbournewireless.org.au/#can_somebody_gave_the_fcc_id_of_this_ap__apparently_it_s_being_approved_and_will_get_one_for_sale_in_the_us_of_a_
[19]
http://www.melbournewireless.org.au/#is_the_binary_wireless_driver_supports_ad_hoc_mode__can_you_double_check_
[20] http://www.melbournewireless.org.au/?MinitarHacking
[21] http://www.melbournewireless.org.au/files/Misc/Minitar/
[22] http://www.edimax.com/
[23] http://www.edimax.com.tw/html/english/products/EW-7206APB.htm
[24] http://rtl8181.sourceforge.net
[25] http://www.eyo.com.au
[26] http://www.warcom.com.au
[27] http://www.pcrange.com.au
[28] http://www.freenet-antennas.com
[29] http://www.techtopia.net.au
[30]
http://www.realtek.com.tw/products/products1-2.aspx?modelid=2003052
[31]
http://web.icsi.com.tw/domino/packinfo.nsf/WebDSProcNum/(ADB311E3EC53802EC4CC49AE52D1632C)?OpenDocument
[32] http://www.felinemenace.org/~andrewg/stuff/RTL8181.pdf
[33] http://www.melbournewireless.org.au/?RokLobsta
[34]
http://www.realtek.com.tw/products/products1-2.aspx?modelid=2003052
[35]
http://www.mxic.com.tw/web/P_flash.nsf/bf3add4f68988391c825667100209fa5/785e059690440530482569d1000d3acc?OpenDocument
[36]
http://web.icsi.com.tw/domino/packinfo.nsf/WebDSProcNum/(ADB311E3EC53802EC4CC49AE52D1632C)?OpenDocument
[37]
http://www.semiconductors.philips.com/technologies/wirelessconnectivity/sa2400/
[38]
http://www.rose-hulman.edu/~roehmj2/ECE360/documents/SA2400A_1.pdf
[39] http://matt.ucc.asn.au/minitar/
[40] http://www.minitar.com/downloads/MIN2APB_2.20.zip
[41] http://www.melbournewireless.org.au/?MinitarLs
[42] http://openwince.sourceforge.net/jtag/
[43]
http://www.mips.com/content/Documentation/MIPSDocumentation/EJTAG/doclibrary
[44] http://www.wireless.org.au/~jhecker/rtljtag
[45] http://www.melbournewireless.org.au/minitar#news
[46] http://www.melbournewireless.org.au/?MinitarHacking
[47] http://www.melbournewireless.org.au/?BogoMIPS
[48] http://www.melbournewireless.org.au/?BogoMIPS
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