Death of a Router
Well, I guess it had to happen at some point, but I've finally had my first major setback on the project. I'm not sure when it occurred, but my WRTSL54GS bit the dust some where along the line. Friday and Saturday I mounted the routers to the car and all looked well. Sunday I ran ping tests until the batteries died on both routers. I was feeling really good about it all. I didn't mess with the machine for a couple of days, but I took it to work to show it off. Today I noticed that the router hadn't initialized the USB drive on the SL54GS, but I figured it was some kind of boot error. Not so. The router no longer responds to pings and either I botched the console head block install, or it isn't handing out console output either. The end result is that the thing is dead. Multiple failures at resetting to fail-safe mode and trying to tftp to it. **sigh**
So now what? I have my spare router, but I have a couple of questions about this whole thing. Here are the only things I can think of that caused the issue.
- I shorted the router out at some point and didn't notice. Definitely possible and I will be doing more to insulate the mounting screw beneath the board to make sure.
- The battery test killed it when the voltage dropped too low. This seems kinda unlikely to me. Why would low voltage brick the thing? Wouldn't it just shut down? Still something to consider.
- One of my kids got to it between Sunday's testing and my demos today. Not all together unlikely either.
So now the question is, do I hook up my spare and start testing. It's about a $100 risk to do so. Or do I spend more time trying to diagnose the first failure? With only 4 weeks left to the due date, I'd better make a decision fast.
