Comp ASUS WL-700gE MULTIFUNCTIONAL WIRELESS STORAGE ROUTER (160GB HDD) $99 [Archive]

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zzzzoooo

Mar 27th, 2009, 03:32 PM

Infonect is selling WL-700gE at $99 ($193 - $94) until Mar/29.

http://www.infonec.com/site/main.php?module=detail&id=342188

Spec
Standards IEEE 802.3/3u, IEEE 802.11b/g
Device Management Web-based manager
UPnP Internet Gateway Device
UPnP Media Server
S.M.A.R.T for Disk Monitoring and Report
USB RAID with RAID 0, 1
Security 64/128-bit WEP
TKIP, AES, WPA, WPA-PSK
WPA/WPA2 WPA
Ports 1 x RJ45 10/100 Base-T WAN Port
4 x RJ45 10/100 Base-T LAN Ports
1 x IDE Port
3 x USB 2.0
Buttons EZS button: push for 5 seconds to enter easy setup mode
Auto Copy button: push for copying data from USB disk to internal IDE disk
Reset button: push for above 5 seconds to restore factory settings or perform H/W-reset
Modulation CCK, DBPSK, DQPSK, OFDM
Frequency Band 2.4GHz - 2.5GHz
Antenna 2 (one internal inverted-F PCB antenna and one external dipole antenna)
Reverse-SMA antenna connector
Channels 11 for N.America, 14 Japan, 13 Europe(ETSI), 3(non-overlapping)
Transmitted Power 18~19 dBm (at normal temp. range)
Interface Ethernet Port
Power Input AC Input: 100V~240V(50~60HZ)
Wireless Adapter included No
Dimensions 9.5" x 6.3" x 1.8"
Weight 3.1 lbs.

Features
Features Real Time Clock x 1
Quiet and Stylish Design
Easy File Transfer with AUTO COPY
Built-in 160GB Hard Drive
Internet-based platform for sharing large files with colleagues, friends and clients at remote locations
Creating a Website is Not a Problem
Download Master
Plug 'n Share USB Storage & Mirroring Backup
Digital Home Information Center

Hardware
Broadcom 4780 @ 266MHz (BCM4780PKPBG) SoC with hardware encryption (crypto not currently supported)
2MB FLASH (MX 29LV160CT1C-90G) and 64MB DDR-SDRAM (2 * Samsung K4H561638F-UCCC)
VIA USB 2.0 controller (VT6212L), 3 external USB connectors, one internal (pads on PCB)
Acard/Artop PATA controller (ATP865-B) and Hitachi 160GB 7200rpm PATA disk (HDT722516DLAT80)
Empty mini-pci header on PCB (not usable on stock enclosure and missing mini-pci connector itself)
Broadcom switch, 4 LAN, 1 WAN (BCM5325EKQMG)
Broadcom Single-Chip 802.11g Transceiver (BCM4318EKFBG)
RTC on I2C (Ricoh RV5C386A, CR1220 3V battery, requires a RtcRv5c386a driver)
TTL serial port hidden under powersupply (4-pin header)

You can not run Tomato/MLPPP nor DD-WRT on this but you can run Open-WRT instead and possibly Linux/MLPPP.

Open-WRT: http://wiki.openwrt.org/OpenWrtDocs/Hardware/Asus/WL700gE
AsusTek: http://www.asus.com/Product.aspx?P_ID=7kgEDZYvkQwgxWSH
Custom Firmwares: http://wl700g.homelinux.net/portal/
http://www.shopbot.ca/default.asp?kw=wl-700ge&position=search

raskal

Mar 27th, 2009, 03:39 PM

interesting looking device, too bad shipping is $28 to the West coast :(

vv12

Mar 27th, 2009, 03:39 PM

This looks pretty hot to me. I though of the dns323 before now maybe i will get this. Any idea whether the HD interface is sata and can be swapped?

PS. Just google, the interface is pata(IDE) and some use an adapter to use a sata harddrive.

addicted2it

Mar 27th, 2009, 03:59 PM

Nice deal OP..Might purchse this one.

P.S: Dont know why they list 2 prices..just a couple of bucks but I was confused.
Price: $193.00
Weekly Special: -$94.00

Sale Price: $99.00

* Regular price: $101.97. All listed prices are in Canadian fund and before taxes & shipping.

khulit

Mar 27th, 2009, 04:10 PM

zzzzoooo

Mar 27th, 2009, 04:24 PM

BestOffer

Mar 27th, 2009, 04:31 PM

* Regular price: $101.97

raskal

Mar 27th, 2009, 04:41 PM

* Regular price: $101.97

$99 is the Cash or Debit price
$101 is the credit card price

Mr Al

Mar 27th, 2009, 04:42 PM

According to their website, and other reviews, it's IDE. If you change the HD, you would void the warranty.

Mr Al

Keiki

Mar 27th, 2009, 04:59 PM

According to their website, and other reviews, it's IDE. If you change the HD, you would void the warranty.

Mr Al

If you flash the firmware to dd-wrt, you void the warranty too ;)

Anyways, this looks pretty interesting... if I didn't already have a stable router (Asus Wl500gP :cheesygri) I would probably jump on this. It'd make a great media server without any modifications.

And I'm just thinking... they offer a cash discount, but it's around $2. Many people have cc's that offer an extra year of warranty. So, it's $2 for 1 year of extra warranty :razz:

But it's also good to help the little guy out by not using credit card.. meh, it's RFD afterall

superfigz

Mar 27th, 2009, 05:02 PM

And I'm just thinking... they offer a cash discount, but it's around $2. Many people have cc's that offer an extra year of warranty. So, it's $2 for 1 year of extra warranty :razz:

But it's also good to help the little guy out by not using credit card.. meh, it's RFD afterall

Make sure to read your CC warranty upgrade plan. A few of the ones ive looked at exclude computers and computer components

khulit

Mar 27th, 2009, 05:27 PM

That is why I hesistated to purchase this in the beginining too, however if you google more about this little gadget, you will be quite surprised what people can do with it due to Open-WRT and 64 MB RAM, at least I was :cheesygri (I agree that WL-500gP is definitely amazing device too).

IMHO, it could've been a killer device if it were to have 4MB or higer ROM.

I doubt it... it barely runs Openwrt based on the Openwrt wiki...although the 64MB RAM is great... my WL500GP's 32MB RAM seems to be always 90% used all the time, so it would probably be nice to have more RAM (I've enabled a swap drive partition though)... 2MB of ROM? what was Asus thinking? They know that the first thing people do when they buy their router is to switch it with other firmwares since their firmware sucks...

good deal bc

Mar 28th, 2009, 01:15 AM

forgive me for asking but what can you do with this device?

grape

Mar 28th, 2009, 01:26 AM

forgive me for asking but what can you do with this device?

i think u almost can think of it as a network server storage. for ur home and other ppl...

bbhunter2007

Mar 28th, 2009, 10:21 AM

i think u almost can think of it as a network server storage. for ur home and other ppl...

This is probably a stupid question: How is this one compared to a D-link DNS-323 or a HP Media Server? What's the pros and cons?

Mr Al

Mar 28th, 2009, 07:00 PM

This is probably a stupid question: How is this one compared to a D-link DNS-323 or a HP Media Server? What's the pros and cons?

I picked one up today, and it worked out of the box. I copied some 40GB through 100 ethernet and holy crapola did it take forever. I have since updated the firmware, and will do some more playing. It DID fix some issues I was having with the D-Link gaming router I have, as all of my network shares are now showing up. Hopefully the update will speed things up... ?

In the manual it says that you can turn off the HD and have the unit still function, which is incorrect. You have to turn off the whole unit if you want the HD off.

There are quite a few people developing custom firmware for it, but I am too afraid of bricking it, so I will stick with the Asus f/w for now.

Mr Al

Mr Al

Mar 29th, 2009, 10:34 AM

The iTunes server is semi borked. It won't show ID3's from CD's that I ripped.
It does show the tag data from music that I downloaded though. Weird... This is with the latest f/w from Asus. Other people are having exactly the same problem.

I am trying using a program called Tagscanner to try to fix this. Some people have said that if you convert you music to Apple's format, it fixes it, but I have about 40GB of music, so that's just not an option.

For a hundred bucks, it's a neat toy though, and if can get the iTunes server working properly, it's a great deal.

Mr Al

Hugh

Mar 29th, 2009, 03:15 PM

2MB ROM really kills this... Too bad... I got confused why Openwrt can run on this, but DD-WRT can't.... then I read the specs, and found out why.... 2MB is too small for a DD-WRT...

I'll stick with my WL-500gP running DD-WRT and USB enabled with 500GB external USB HDD and webcam feature....

In theory, firmware can reside on the hard drive. After all, that's where Linux lives on a PC. 160G is much larger than 16M or 32M.

I don't know if, in a normal router distro, code is executed directly out of the flash, something that you cannot do with code on a hard drive. I would expect that most code is read off the flash and excuted in RAM for two reasons: (1) much of the code in flash is probably compressed and must be decompressed (to RAM) to execute and (2) executing from directly from flash would be much slower than copying to RAM and executing from there.

The bootstrap process surely requires some uncompressed code, probably executed directly from flash.

The openwrt page isn't working for me at the moment: a redirect loop of some kind.

Mr Al

Mar 29th, 2009, 03:58 PM

Tagscanner fixed the problem with mp3 tags! I am very happy!

Just another note, the HD is fairly noisy, and it randomly seeks, so this might take a while to get used to it if you have it in your bedroom.

Thanks to the OP !

Mr Al

Mr Al

Apr 4th, 2009, 10:59 AM

I just loaded the kfurge custom firmware and now my PS3 found my music collection. It also spins down the HD too, so it's much quieter most of the time.

If you bought one, it's highly recommended!

http://wl700g.homelinux.net/drupal/?q=node/134

Mr Al

zzzzoooo

Apr 4th, 2009, 11:32 AM

I picked up mine on Wednesday but didn't have much time to play with it yet. I only tried kfurge custom firmware so far.

I found that OpenWRT/MLPPP might be possible with WL-700gE.

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r20800427-MLPPP-on-OpenWRT

BTW, there is ASUS WL-520gU with 10$ MIR ($37 @ BestDirect) available currently which is known to work well with Tomato/MLPPP.

http://www.shopbot.ca/default.asp?orderby=p&p1=&p2=&kw=wl-520gu&position=search

Beat Bell Throttle (http://www.redflagdeals.com/forums/showthread.php?t=594003)

Mr Al

Apr 18th, 2009, 07:07 PM

I have to give up on this router. I can't get sharing working with my Linux box. I have tried about 6 different distro's and versions, and nothing works.:mad:

I re-installed my D-Link DGL-4300 and updated the firmware, and everything seems to be working. I may try to install this onto the network without the routing function, just as a server.

Mr Al.