[ap-utils] AP strangeness

[Jan Rafaj]

On Mon, 24 Jan 2005, John Coppens wrote:

> On Mon, 24 Jan 2005 21:25:28 +0100 (MET)
> Jan Rafaj <jr-aputils at cedric.unob.cz> wrote:
>
> > To my knowledge, they (ATMEL) didnt really made any firmware version
> > available for public download through their OEMs, as for this particular
> > hardware version (at least, I havent seen any).
> > Anyway, AT76C510 has been EoL'ed by ATMEL for almost year already,
> > and that might be why they are just dumb...
>
> Hi Jan.
>
> Thanks _very_ much for the info! Your mail solved more doubts than I could
> resolve with a couple of weeks of googling.
>
> One short question...
>
> Would it be possible to _download_ the firmware from the card, just to
> have a backup available? I've noticed that ap-tftp doesn't mention
> that possibility. But rfc1350 does...
>
> John

TFTP server implemented in the firmware for AT76C510-based APs does
not seem to respect that rfc to full extent - at least, it may produce
error codes that do not have their counterparts defined in rfc
(and even original windows-based TFTP client used to upgrade these
devices, exposes them just as numbers).
And AFAIK, it does not implement PUT method. So no, it is not possible
using TFTP, tho. Similar goes for USB utility.
There's just a way of how to read entire flash memory image - thats
possible using the JTAG interface AT76C510 provides. I've been able
to do this, but I dont have enough JTAG boundary scan-related
informations that would allow me to actually perform a writeback.
For APs with INTERSIL radios, it is possible to separate the firmware
file itself from the resulting image you've obtained by JTAG or direct
flash read, since it does not, by itself, perform any operation to
store itself at different memory offsets, but firmware for APs with
RFMD radios actually _does_ this, so the 'isolate firmware from
image' method would not work for them at all.

Regards,

Jan