Sunday afternoon I sucessfully flashed the WRT54GL router with DD-WRT. In the preparations for doing the flash, I read alot on the DD-WRT website making certain I knew what to expect. The website makes it very clear that an improper flash can brick your hardware. Following the instructions exactly made the process relatively uneventful though I did have a momentary panic after doing the second hard reset. After the firmware flash was complete I did another 30/30/30 reset as per the instructions the power light continued blinking for longer than it ought to. So I hit the reset button briefly without power cycling the router and then it booted correctly. It has been working ever since.

Now that I have the router working correctly with it handling DHCP and DNS. I’m considering what the home server is going to be doing in the future.