Setup / Basic Settings

Does Your Internet Connection Require A Login? No
Account Name: Blank
Domain Name: Blank
Internet IP Address: Get Dynamically From ISP (If you have a static IP address, enter it here).
Domain Name Server (DNS) Address: Get Automatically From ISP (I’m actually using the OpenDNS servers, so I have entered 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220)
NAT (Network Address Translation): Enable
Router MAC Address: Use Default Address

Setup / ADSL Settings

Multiplexing Method: LLC-based
VPI: 0
VCI: 101

Routing Issues

Unfortunately, I suffered intermittent routing issues – other users have reported similar issues in this thread.

Thanks to wilderbeastie, there is a workaround detailed here:

Option One

1. Enable telnet access in the router.

http://192.168.0.1/setup.cgi?todo=debug

2. Login via telnet to 192.168.0.1 (via putty or the command line)

3. Run the following command: -

“echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/neigh/nas0/ucast_solicit”

This setting doesn’t survive a reboot so needs re-applying every time.

If you suffer loss of routing, this procedure also seems to restore it (i.e. you shouldn’t need to reboot first).

Option Two

This is exactly the same fix as detailed in option one but the command is inside the following link – all you need to do is copy & paste (all one line) into your browser and enter the username and password: -

http://192.168.0.1/setup.cgi?todo=ping_test&c4_IPAddr=%26/bin/echo%200%20%3E/proc/sys/net/ipv4/neigh/nas0/ucast_solicit

Again, this fix doesn’t survive a reboot.

Option Three

James from ADSL24 has patched the standard firmware to run the relevant commands on startup of the router.

The downloads are here.

This method will survive a reboot.

The only way that I could access them is by using this link.

Once you’ve got them, you can copy them into a stats checker such as this one.

This should all work with the standard “Administrator” user (no password), other functionality is available with the SuperUser user – password default is “O2Br0ad64nd”.

• 1.6GHz Intel Atom 230 CPU
• 2GB DDR2 RAM
• 500GB hard disk
• Nvidia GeForce 9400M graphics
• HDMI, D-SUB out
• eSATA
• 6 x USB
• 4-in-1 card reader
• Gigabit Ethernet
• 802.11bg WLAN
• Size: 30mm x 180mm x 180mm

The Windows Experience comes out at a weedy 2.2 due to the Atom CPU but the rest of the ratings look pretty decent for such a low-powered PC (it got up to a maximum of around 34 watts during the tests – normally it hovers at around 23 watts when idling).

Next up – install Linux!

The Acer Aspire Revo has a lot of potential for a home media player but the 160gb hard drive won’t be large enough for everybody.

I spotted a special offer on a Iomega Prestige 500gb Portable Hard Drive which contains (in my case) a Seagate Momentus 5400.6 drive, model ST9500325AS .

I already had a working installation of Windows 7 RC, so here’s how I swapped the hard drives: -

1. Download the Clonezilla ISO file (I used clonezilla-live-1.2.2-14.iso) and install it to USB stick via Unetbootin.
2. Boot Revo with Clonezilla USB stick attached & USB Hard Drive attached.
3. Select “device-device disk/partition to disk/partition” and choose the 160gb internal hard drive (/dev/sda) as the source and the 500gb USB hard drive (/dev/sdb) as the target.
4. Confirm (it asks a few times!) and then wait for cloning to be complete. This will take a long time, as it copies all partitions (on my original hard drive I had 4 partitions – Windows 7 NTFS, Linux ext3, Data NTFS and Linux swap).
5. Open the Iomega USB drive (two screws at the back) and take out the Seagate 500gb hard drive.
6. Open the Revo & Swap the hard drives (see forum post here).
7. Swap the drives and re-assemble the Revo and portable hard drive.
8. Boot up the Revo with the new hard drive in it – it should boot straight up.
9. Extend the partitions to make use of the full 500gb space (this can be done in Windows 7 by going to “Computer” then “Manage”. Go to “Storage” then “Disk Management” and then right-click the drive before selecting “Extend Volume”).
10. Put 160gb hard drive into Iomega case & re-partition hard drive.

Now I have a Revo with lots of storage space, and a spare 160gb portable hard drive for backups etc.

1. Backup Drivers

Using “Revobuild”, take a backup of the drivers on the recovery partition – they are copied to a USB stick. Might come in useful later!

2. Partitioning

Here is how I partitioned the 160GB hard drive (Using “GParted Live” on a USB stick) : -

• Partition 1: Windows 7 – NTFS (20gb)
• Partition 2: Ubuntu – ext3 9.04 (10gb)
• Partition 3: Data – NTFS (FAT32 has 4gb File size limit, linux partitions aren’t easy to access from Windows) ( ~127gb)
• Partition 4: Linux Swap (3gb – swap partition’s size should be at least as large as physical RAM for hibernation)

3. Install Windows 7 OS

Here are some instructions on how to install Windows 7 via a USB flash drive instead of an optical drive (thumb drive has to be at least 4GB).

4. Install Drivers

The most recent Nforce drivers (GPU/SMU/Sata/Ethernet) can be found here. This includes the graphics card driver (GeForce v185.85)

I’ve not tried HDMI yet, but you may also have to install “nVidia HDAudio HDMI Audio” which was saved from the Recovery Partition earlier.

5. Install Latest Graphics Driver

The nVidia GeForce/ION Driver Release 186.18 for Windows 7 was released on 18-Jun-09 so install it from here.

6. Configure Auto-Logon

As this is going to be used as a media centre, I want to skip the initial logon screen.

Press Windows R to bring up the “Run” dialog. Type “control userpasswords2″ and press enter – the “User Accounts” screen will be shown.

Select the user account in the main table and uncheck “Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer”. Press “Apply” button – the “Automatically Log On” window will be displayed. Enter the password and confirm it to add the password to the system so that it does not need to be entered during logon.

That’s it!

• 1.6GHz Intel Atom 230 CPU
• 1GB DDR2 RAM
• 160GB hard disk
• Nvidia GeForce 9400M graphics
• HDMI, D-SUB out
• eSATA
• 6 x USB
• 4-in-1 card reader
• Gigabit Ethernet
• 802.11bg WLAN
• Linux
• Size: 30mm x 180mm x 180mm

I’ve installed Windows 7 (more details in another post) and done a quick test of the power consumption. As I’ve read in reviews (but didn’t quite believe!) the power draw hovers between 19 and 20 watts (this is idle – just displaying the Windows desktop after everything has finished loading).

I intend to stick another stick of 1GB RAM inside it, so maybe this will increase the power consumption slightly, buts its still pretty good!

After playing around with DD-WRT, OpenWRT, and Tomato, I finally settled on Tomato. The features are too many to list here so here’s a link to the Wiki.

There’s also a great article on Lifehacker here.

I much prefer my Linksys WRT54GL for general network stuff, running Tomato firmware.

All is not lost – it’s fairly easy to set the BeBox to work in “Bridged mode”: -

Log onto the Bebox (http://192.168.1.254) and change the configuration to be “Multi IP 4 Data ports”.

On the WRT54GL, in the WAN/Internet section, change to “Static” and enter the Be settings into “Static WAN IP address”, “Wan NetMask” and “Gateway IP address”.

You then need to connect the WRT54GL Wan port to the BeBox.

This is it. Unfortunately you lose the ability to log onto the BeBox to check ADSL status etc. To fix this, in Tomato, go to “Administration / Scripts”

Add this to “WAN Up”: -

ip addr add 192.168.1.1/24 dev vlan1 brd +

and this to “Firewall”: -

/usr/sbin/iptables -I POSTROUTING -t nat -o vlan1 -d 192.168.1.0/24 -j MASQUERADE

You should now be able to access your BeBox by going to http://192.168.1.254

(This is all assuming that your local network is 192.168.0.* like mine is)