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What Can You Do w/ 170,000 DirecTV DSL Gateways?

Posted by Cliff on from the reviving-hardware-for-home-projects dept.

An anonymous reader asks: "I'm sure everyone here is already aware of the impending demise of DirecTV DSL. The latest twist is that, apparently, they're not going to want subs to return the DSL gateways, at least that's the buzz in the DSL Reports DirecTV DSL forum. If true, this means that we'll have around 170,000 of these things floating around, just begging to live again in some other capacity. So, what can be done with them? Seems a shame to let such neat little boxes go to waste. Does anyone care to come up with some creative ideas on how to hack them and make them do something useful?"

4 of 24 comments (clear)

  1. Make a beowulf cluster by anthony_dipierro · · Score: 5, Funny

    of DirecTV DSL gateways, of course.

  2. Specifications by Drakon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    these babies are 50 mhz PPCs with 4 megs of ram and 16 megs of flash
    they have an ethernet port (rj45) and a DSL port (rj11) and a USB port
    I'm not sure if I can add more capacity, and I won't check until the thing stops working :-(
    LinuxPPC :-)

    --
    Buttsex.
  3. This one's too easy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    1. Gimp up a legit looking "Postage to be Paid by Addressee" RMA tag

    2. Get 170,000 people to print out a copy and box up their DSL gateway

    3. Send 170,000 DSL gateways to Hughes/DirecTV, postage-due, with a "Thanks for cutting off my DSL, you insensitive clod" note attached.

    Of course, this would be mail fraud, so I'm not actually suggesting it or anything :)

  4. Can't be done. by -dsr- · · Score: 4, Informative

    DSL isn't a shared medium, bucko. Each PSTN line gets provisioned to a central office, and from there is either sent to an ISP-specific aggregator or a CO-aggregator that sends each connection off to an ISP-specific aggregator.

    Now, these boxes could probably be reprogrammed to act as DSL gateways for another service -- but you would need to get an ISP to reprovision the line to your house.

    Assuming you can boot Linux/PPC or NetBSD on them, you could use them as high-speed links on dry pairs. Either run your own wiring, or get the telco to string you an "alarm circuit" from point to point.