Archer C2 v1 - How to come back to OEM firmware?

Hardware Questions and Recommendations
1

I want to come back to the OEM firmware for my TP-Link Archer C2 v1 (I want to sell it).
I did not find any procedure for this in the device page :

But the installation method is a bit specific and described with a specific ArcherC2V1_tp_recovery.bin file (for including the U-boot binary extracted from OEM firmware).
It appears then that OEM and OpenWrt firmwares are different on different perpectives (U-boot, etc...), and I don't really feel capable of recovering this device if it would be bricked for some reason ...

My question is simple : what is the best proper way to come back to the OEM firmware ?
Do I simply need to flash the OEM firmware from OpenWrt Luci web interface ?
Or do I need to build a special binary file ?
Or another methodology ?

Currently the device is on OpenWrt 22.03.3 release.
Everything works fine so far on this release.

If anyone can help, thanks for your support.

2

The thread

https://forum.archive.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=52625&p=14

Dbzafgt mentions they used the following command to strip the bootloader from the OEM firmware and used the gui to flash it successfully.

dd if=orig.bin of=tplink.bin skip=257 bs=512

I have no personal experience of this though.

If you have an issue with flashing, looks as though your router has tftp recovery

3

Thank you.
I read this post but did not really understand its meaning, especially what is 'orig.bin' (is it OEM firmware ?)...
Do I have to do next a 'cat' command after that to merge with another binary (which one ?) ?
I don't get why the OEM firmware would need to be stripped
The mentionned archive forum was going in many directions that it was hard for me to follow them...

Does that mean that if I was trying to flash a 'tplink.bin" from tftp as described before, it should be easy to recover to OpenWrt in case of failure ?

4

orig.bin is the OEM firmware. The command removes the bootloader from the firmware as openwrt doesn't flash this from my understanding.

You should be able to flash an openwrt image using tftp as described in the wiki article for your device.

It may be prudent to do a full backup of your device using the methods mentioned in this article, might be useful in case of an issue.

5

Okay I made it and it worked.
Thank you @d687r02j8g for your help and clarifications.

IMO, this procedure should be explained in the device page.
Is there a contact for doing so ?

The procedure is :

  1. make a new stripped binary based on original OEM firmware with :
dd if=original_OEM.bin of=stripped_OEM.bin skip=257 bs=512
  1. Flash this new stripped binary in the Luci web GUI
    You need to force the flashing because you have warnings at the checking step.
  2. by default, the OEM firmware has setup the gateway at 192.168.0.1
6

The wiki content is user provided.

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