Speeding up the NSLU2

In my home network I have a small NAS (Network Attached Storage) solution consisting of a Linksys NSLU2 (Network Storage Link for USB 2.0 Disk Drives) and a number of attached external USB hard disks.

The NSLU2 or "SLUG" as it is often called runs Linux, as per the terms of the GNU General Public License Linksys were required to release their source code. Due to the availability of this code and the relatively low cost of the device, there are several community projects centered around it. Including a number of replacement firmware images available for the device. I have been tempted to use Unslung which is based on the official Linksys firmware with some improvements and features added, but have been wary about bricking it.

Despite it running the official firmware it has proved a reliable device and the attached drives are full of my music and video collection. However it has never been the speediest device, sometimes being sluggish(sic) to transfer across the network and the web-interface sometimes being painful slow to respond.

The device has two USB 2.0 ports for connecting hard disks and uses an ARM-compatible Intel XScale IXP420 CPU. The device includes 32 MB of SDRAM, and 8 MB of Flash memory. It also has a 100 megabit Ethernet network connection.

I have discovered that models manufactured prior to around April 2006, Linksys had, for an unknown reason, under-clocked the processor to 133MHz, though a simple hardware modification to remove this restriction is possible. Later models (circa. May 2006) are clocked at the rated speed of 266MHz.

Today I took the plunge and opened up the unit and removed the appropriate resistor. Full details on this page.



I can confirm that the device is indeed much speedier and responsive. Maybe I might just get around to trying out Unslung and installing Tomato firmware on my WRT54G.