Wireless Xbox 360 adapter on the cheap

As part of my quest to turn my Xbox 360 into a media center I realized that if I want my wife to use it, I have to go wireless.  Right now, if i want to go online, I run an ethernet cable about 20 feet across the living room to my router.  I want my wife to be able to grab the controller, hit a button and be looking at pictures or a video in seconds.  Telling her to "take the yellow wire, unravel it and plug it into the back of this thing here"  just isn't user friendly.

After spending the money for the NAS, I really didn't want to spend another $100 on an Xbox wireless adapter.  So I found a cheap way to do it myself.

1) Get a inexpensive wireless router.
2) Download and install DD-WRT ( a freeware replacement firmware for many routers) on #1. You MUST check the website dd-wrt.com/dd-wrtv3/dd-wrt/hardware.html  first before you buy #1 to make sure the router and firmware are supported.
3) Follow the instructions at www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Client_Mode_Wireless 
4) Hook up to xbox and enjoy!

What you do with DD-WRT is set the new wireless router to be a client. The Xbox just sees it as just another router and the new router then connects wirelessly to your primary wireless router and passes all the packets to/from the xbox.

I got myself a $25 Linksys WRT54G2  (www.ecost.com/Detail.aspx ) from ecost.com (thanks for the pointer clobber!) and was up and running in about 30 minutes.

You have to be careful in choosing your router, there are a number of routers where an early version of the firmware is supported but a later version is not. The supported hardware link I posted above gives you all the info you need, if you are buying a router at the store, you have to check the box very carefully to find the firmware revision. If you have an old wireless router at home, hook it up to your computer and check the router status page.