There is already a soldered 0.1" header for UART in this device, so its extremely easy to connect to it, even the pins are labeled.
Just make sure you are not using a 5V UART adapter, then its really easy to load the initramfs image via U-Boot
Happy to report that the XGS-PON sfp works in this build on Openwrt with no modifications. Great improvement from stock firmware already; will be able to completely bypass the AT&T provided router!
Understood. I will make an attempt with the B1 HW Revision. May take me a while because of how lazy I am.
Not trying to insult myself, just stating facts.
So Im messing around with my routers and find out that for the specific project I want to do, it involves the need for a 64 bit Linux kernel
Is the firmware being developed for this router going to be using the 64bit Linux kernel?
Yes.
1 Like
Exciting to see the progress on this router, thanks for working on it!
Just wanted ask, will it be possible to install OpenWRT from the stock router UI once your work will be in good shape, or it will always require UART method?
This is quite possible to implement.
The pull request needed for this has long been created: https://github.com/openwrt/firmware-utils/pull/19
2 Likes
Good to know, thanks!
By the way, will the SFP+ port work with transceivers in 1 or 2.5 Gbps modes? From Asus FAQ they only support 10 Gbps mode, but not sure if it's the cage limitation or their firmware is simply not supporting more.
And does this router have several installation partitions that can be swapped for booting in case of some failure (like some other models)?
Hmm..trying to build the trx (to at least flash from uboot). Anyone tried this yet? I wasn't able to make the trx boot correctly when I chose flash at u-boot. Still works to tftp boot the initramfs file directly though.
I think this relates to SFP+ modules firmware more, not talking about this AX98X, even on my Mikrotik switch, most cheap 3rd party RJ45 SFP+ copper get recognized as "multimode 10G SFP+" as a result host device will default it as 10G device, however something like Mikrotik S+RJ10 would indicate itself as 2.5/5/10G based on peer device speed (I remember Supermicro has one that can do the same as well)
1 Like
Main issue is the whole QCA networking stack here as we cannot attach a proper SFP bus on top of the MAC currently, so there is no Phylink support which would change the MAC mode on the fly and no EEPROM decoding to figure out the SFP capabilities.
Based on the @robimarko repository, I compiled my own versions of the OpenWRT images.
Similar installation instructions are here: Asus TUF AX4200 support - #241 by remittor
(download images from the ASUS_RT-AX89X folder)
PS.: I haven't tested anything on this device! Use this at your own risk!!!
1 Like
So it means that it will always try to operate in 10 Gbps?
By default for sure, maybe its possible to force a certain speed via ethtool.
1 Like
Just to follow up, does this router have multiple partitions like let's say Linksys WRT3200ACM or it's all a single partition one?
Reader, Hes talking about this link https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1c10G1LZuTiCo8dOItq3FV6A3-XK7-QfV
Remittor, I notice that in the folder, you have "initramfs for web". Does this load through the webgui but still stay loaded in memory instead of the routers nand chip?
It seems to me like the final thing for this router is its nand chip.
With each successful call to command sysupgrade, volume linux is deleted and created again (contain kernel image).
???
I am talking about permanent flashing to the nand chip. I read here a while ago that this firmware can only be loaded into ram and work from there.
So if this router is rebooted, the firmware has to be reloaded again.
AFAIK anyway.
initramfs images are loaded once into RAM and do not require additional access to other data storage devices for their operation.
It’s just that in all instructions these images are loaded via TFTP into RAM, and then loaded into another RAM location using the bootm (or other) command.
Any bootloader can easily load an initramfs image into memory directly from flash memory. The main thing is to assemble the image itself correctly.