The Linksys E3000 is based on the same hardware as the Linksys WRT610N v2.0 with changes to the CFE and a larger NVRAM block. The E3000 is based on the Broadcom 4718 cpu running at 480MHz. It has 8 MB flash (MX29LV640EBTI) and 64 MB SDRAM (H5PS5162FFR). The WNICs are provided by the BCM4718 SoC (2.4GHz B, G and N) and a second constituent chip, the BCM4322 (5GHz A and N). The switch is a BCM53115 chip. The E3000 runs 802.11 A, B, G, and Draft N wireless protocols. It provides 4 gigabit LAN ports, 1 WAN port and a USB 2.0 'storage link' port.

TODO

1. There is a set of patches to allow support for the E3000 switch and WIFI under 3.0.4 kernel builds written by George Kashperko et.al.
2. ⇒ See the README.
3. Patchset has not yet been incorporated into OpenWrt main development tree
4. a RAMDISK Image of OpenWrt trunk r28295 + the patchset was successfully booted, see ⇒ 3.0.4_bootlog.

Caveats

• Only the WNIC contained in the SoC works at this time with the proprietary Broadcom drivers
• USB support is not 100%. Overcurrent on port error messages have intermittently been seen.
• Use At Your Own Risk

Note: This will void your warranty!

The case is held together with 4 T-10 security star-drive screws (security torx). The top is also attached with plastic claws and it is easiest to start working these from one of the front corners and working the front apart, then work toward the back.

There are 5 solder pads near the rim on the backside of the PCB, see image from WRT610n.

There is also a serial connection on the PCB inside of the WAN port. Serial port settings are 115000@8N1.

The CFE installed on the E3000 locates itself at 0x80700000. This can cause conflicts with the standard VMLINUX_LOAD_ADDRESS for BCM47XX devices, 0x80001000 when the image size is > 7335936 bytes. It is not known at this time how much this will hamper development efforts. It is possible to modify the VMLINUX_LOAD_ADDRESS in arch/mips/bcm47xx/Platform to allow larger ramdisk enabled images to be tested. A setting of 0x81001000 has been successful with tftp loading of large ramdisk based firmware image.