It seems that all of the Linksys WRT54G’s that I’ve come across for a good price lately are the WRT54G-TM variant.  The TM stands for T-Mobile.  In all honesty I’m not sure how the T-Mobile hot spot functionality works.  I don’t really care either.  What I know is that this router is actually an excellent candidate for a DD-WRT installation.  In fact, I’d argue that it’s even better than the WRT54GL because this one has 32MB of ram opposed to the 16MB on the GL version.  The only small downside on the WRT54G-TM is that you’ll have to jump through a couple more obstacles to make it run DD-WRT.  Don’t let this put you off at all!  There are excellent instructions out there and I’m going to give you a short overview as well.  First off, here are the official instructions for putting DD-WRT on the WRT54G-TM.

If you plan to load this firmware on your WRT54G-TM, I highly recommend using Internet Explorer on Windows.  Everything seems to go the smoothest using this configuration.  When I’ve tried Firefox on my Mac I’ve had trouble and the same goes for Safari.  Just save some pain and use IE if you have access to it.  Now for the fun stuff:

  1. Download the latest version of DD-WRT for the WRT54G-TM.  Run a quick search on this page to find it.  http://www.dd-wrt.com/site/support/router-database.  While you are there, grab the tftp program and the CFE updater binary.
  2. Set your Windows machine to the static ip 192.168.0.2.  While you are in there, click advanced and add a second ip 192.168.1.2.
  3. Pick a port 1-4 and plug it into your computer’s ethernet port.
  4. Do a hard reset on your WRT54G-TM to put it back to factory settings by unplugging the router, holding the reset switch on the back of the router, plugging it in and keeping holding the switch for 30 seconds.
  5. Log into your router at 192.168.0.1.  No username, password is admin.
  6. Click administration, then update firmware.  Update the firmware with the CFE binary file.  That should go pretty quick and say something like “Upgrade succeeded”.
  7. Wait….  While you are waiting, bring up a command prompt and ping -t 192.168.1.1.  When you get a response to your pings, you can quit waiting and move to the next step.
  8. Fire up the TFTP client and type in 192.168.1.1 for the server IP and for the file put in the location of the ddwrt.v????  firmware file.  Hit upgrade and wait.
  9. Now go to 192.168.1.1 in your web browser.  You should see a screen prompting a user password change.  Now is a great time to set your root password.

That’s it!  It sounds a lot harder than it actually is.  Post some comments on your own experiences with the WRT54G-TM.

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