DD-WRT on Linksys EA8500

I have a Linksys EA8500 but found the UI pretty limiting, so I decided to try out DD-WRT. Unfortunately, Linksys doesn’t make this easy and you’ll need to use the Serial port on the router’s circuit board to connect and then transfer via ethernet. mrjcd has an amazing guide to install which can be found at http://mrjcd.com/EA8500_DD-WRT/

I have a couple suggestions to anyone wanting to try:
1. Just do it. And cross your fingers.

2.Circuit board doesn’t have serial pins and you’re afraid to solder onto a circuit board?
- Put hand sewing needles in your PL2303 and align them to the slots in the board with a third hand tool. Janky, but successful!

2. Use ncpa.cpl from the Run box to set the static IP of your computer (wow Windows 10 is terrible!)

3. Disable your Windows firewall for the TFTP transfer

4. Change the Server Interface in Tftpd32 to 192.168.1.2 (or whatever you set it to)
- While this is in the image by mrjcd it wasn’t highlighted and I missed it the first time!

5. After I completed the install, my DD-WRT settings reset on router reboot! I upgraded the firmware to r44432 and it worked perfectly!