cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/16959253

I got this AP for free, and had some fun trying to configure it, and I decided to look at the inside of this thing. It has a PowerPC processor, pretty cool!

It is a Cisco Aironet 1131AG

More pics:

It’s an old AP from around 2007, I managed to get the latest firmware thanks to some guy on the Internet Archive (thank god they exists) ! ( https://archive.org/download/cIOS-firmware-images/ )

    • KraftingOP
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      86 months ago

      Of course and I tried to search it, didn’t find the download on the Cisco website sadly, nor the md5sum for this specific file, I found some other sums tho.

      Cisco has a tendancy to remove download or block them behing an account with a licence…

  • lnxtx
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    126 months ago

    If you surprised why it has a PowerPC CPU. It’s actually a SoC.
    From the manual:

    AMCC PowerPC 405 32-bit RISC processor core operating up to 333MHz with 16KB D-and I-caches.

    Designed specifically to address embedded applications, the PowerPC 405EP (PPC405EP), provides a high-performance, low-power solution that interfaces to a wide range of peripherals by incorporating on-chip power management features and lower power dissipation requirements.

    • EbbyA
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      6 months ago

      Sweet! My first computer was a 333mhz PowerPC Mac! Still have that behemoth. Man, I learned video editing and 3d modelind on that thing and totally changed my career path.

      Now 25 years later it’s decendant (roughly?) is a SoC running a wireless hub!

  • debounced
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    76 months ago

    hard to say for sure, but U109 and U208 could be UART into those Cisco baseband or radio chips. one placement for the 2.4 GHz (G) and 5 GHz (A), respectively. would be interesting to probe around there and see if you get a serial interface to it… obviously for extra credit ;-)

    • KraftingOP
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      66 months ago

      Ooo, that’d be fun, and scary, I never done such a thing, maybe I could look at this some day !

  • Possibly linux
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    46 months ago

    Why something that old? WiFi standards move on and so does security.

    However, if it isn’t Broadcom you probably can get OpenWRT running

    • KraftingOP
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      36 months ago

      Why not, old hardware can ne really cool you know! It’s not for running 24/7 of course, just to sée what once was a cool and expensive product

      • Possibly linux
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        -46 months ago

        Not for WiFi. You can get a cheap WiFi 5 device that will work way better. Just flash Openwrt to a supported device and you are golden.