I read up, I studied up, I knew everything to do, and now not once but twice I've had the same issue with getting this damned tomato firware to work.
I started with a brand new 3500L
Prepped it with a 30/30/30 reset
Installed the suggested build of DD-wrt listed on this sites tomato installation guide
Went off without a hitch, ddwrt installed fine
Did another 30/30/30 reset
During my first try I installed Toastman's http://www.myopenrouter.com/download/26575/Toastman-s-Tomato-Firmware-for-WNR3500L-w-USB-Ext/
and the second time, this latest try: http://www.myopenrouter.com/download/32387/Toastman-Tomato-Firmware/
After I recieve a message that it installed successfully and was complete, I then did another 30/30/30 reset.
And now it comes to this: I turn on my router and I get an orange power light, after about 60 sec the lights flash once, the power led turns green and the wireless light turns on (blue) and then when I try to login it times out or I'm very rarely able to login to the tomato firmware but after about 5 seconds I lose my connection to the router.
I want to love the tomato, but I'm about ready to pull my hair out at this point.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
toastman firmware has DHCP disable by default .check if you have an fixed ip set to 192.168.1.x on your pc before attempting to connect to router interface.
Okay. I've set up a static IP now. I can actually login to the router for more than 5 seconds at a time. Now the trick is getting to connect to the internet. I have an 2wire modem (att).
What's my next move?
I think you have now the router and the modem on the same network.
U need change the lan adress of the router (or modem) to e.g 192.168.0.1 and change on PC .
ip internet -> modem (192.168.1.1) -> 192.168.1.x (wan) router 192.168.0.1 (lan)-> PC 192.168.0.x.
U can set in the modem a DMZ 192.168.1.x for the router if you don't want to configure too many firewall rules.
Did you tried it with a static IP?
Its good to know that things are working now.