from Hacker News

Installing OpenWRT on an Unsupported Router

by _Microft on 12/25/24, 11:52 PM with 8 comments

• by qhwudbebd on 12/26/24, 11:38 AM

  Given serial access on an mt7981, you can usually use the UART recovery protocol to boot a bricked device entirely over serial, e.g. with https://github.com/981213/mtk_uartboot just run something like

    mtk_uartboot -s /dev/ttyS0 -a -p bl2.ram -f fip.img
  

  This works even if atf and u-boot are corrupt on the device: it's part of the SoC's boot rom.

  This is one of the things that makes the filogic routers nice to hack at, the other being that they're arm64 rather than something weird and legacy.

• by zekica on 12/26/24, 7:27 AM

  This is a great story. Hopefully it encourages others do the same. I have done a similar thing a few years back for another cheap router that had a new revision.

• by spzb on 12/26/24, 8:10 AM

  Archive link to save hammering the server https://archive.is/wqWkO

• by racked on 12/26/24, 7:43 AM

  > coreboot's "flashrom" doesn't support SPI NAND flashes, neither exists a suitable applet for the Glasgow, and I didn't want to buy an expensive XGecu >>>T56<<< (my TL866II doesn't support them either).

  Would the T48 not be sufficient?

  Unfortunately it is not clear exactly what flash chip is used. Only thing the T48 doesn't support is OneNAND according to https://www.bulcomp-eng.com/datasheet/XGecu%20T56,%20T48,%20...

• by Bancakes on 12/26/24, 9:54 AM

  How can I resurrect a router that doesn't boot? I flashed a nightly version of OpenWRT on my TP Link Archer, and I believe it fails on the bootloader stage.

  I don't have any JTAG/serial comms but I could get some if that's the best way. Thanks

• by grayxu on 12/26/24, 9:27 AM

  You can buy a used AX1800 with OpenWrt in China for around five or six euros.... XD