I recently got my hands on a SilverNet PRO MICRO 95-equivalent (same hardware, different branding) and was wondering if I would be successful in flashing it with stock OpenWRT. The device appears to run a modified OpenWRT image by default, which means it definitely can run OpenWRT, but I'm not sure if any patches and such may be required - I do not want to brick the thing.
From that it seems as though the device definitely has enough RAM - not sure about flash, but the system upgrade image (found on the page linked above) is 9.4-ish megabytes so my guess is that it has enough of that too.
The SoC used by the device is the Qualcomm Atheros AR9342-BL1A, so the ar71xx OpenWRT target seems to apply. However, that has been deprecated; does that mean I can just use ath79-targeted builds?
Any advice on the topic would be greatly appreciated, especially on whether I can use any pre-built image or if I will need to build one myself; if the latter, what patches/changes should I apply?
No, that just means that the vendor and/ or chipset OEM used OpenWrt as a base for their firmware/ SDK, it doesn't say anything about compatibility- or support by OpenWrt.
Correct, albeit nothing to write home about either.
ath79, not ar71xx (anymore, the later no longer exists),
No, you can't use any builds at all, as the device in question isn't supported by OpenWrt yet. Someone (probably you yourself) will have to port OpenWrt/ ath79 to it, which -unless the vendor intentionally made things difficult- should be reasonably possible, but it still involves spending quite some quality time on it, with the opened device on the desk to actually do it.
No, that just means that the vendor and/ or chipset OEM used OpenWrt as a base
Well, in theory, if they used it as a base, then it is compatible given enough patches
nothing to write home about either
I'm not sure what that means to be honest.
No, you can't use any builds at all, as the device in question isn't supported by OpenWrt yet [...]
I didn't seem to notice any artificial hurdles in place whilst playing around with the device so far, so I'm counting on it not being made intentionally difficult, which means hopefully porting should be straightforward enough. Would you be able to provide a link to a suitable porting guide?
That belief is not founded on facts, as basically all vendor SDKs rip out essential parts of OpenWrt (most importantly kernel and drivers) and replace them with proprietary ones.
64 MB RAM just makes the bar, sufficient, but not spectacular.
