Askey RAC2V1K / RT4230W REV6 Support

Sounds good, ebay was the first place I looked and I saw a bunch of the RAC ones. Now I have to ask, is it worth buying this router over just buying a NIC and using an old desktop PC? I hear that this router has some pretty decent hardware but I haven’t looked into it much.

Well I managed to get my hands on one and I flashed openwrt successfully. After flashing the sysupgrade image through Luci, the router light just blinks and nothing boots. Any suggestions?

By flashing do you mean the light is blinking or is it slowly pulsing on and off?

After I originally flashed it using TFTP, it was pulsing slowly on and off and I was able to access the WebGUI for openwrt. In the flash menu in openwrt, I flashed the sysupgrade file and now it won't boot and the light is flashing on and off quickly.

Did you run the second set of setenv commands before doing the sysupgrade? If not then try setting up the tftp server again to see if it'll boot. If it does then just ssh into the router and run the commands.

Yes, I did run the commands. I'm unable to connect to it via tftp or ssh. When I plug into it via lan, my computer doesn't receive an ip via dhcp so it seems that the router is failing to boot.

It sounds like you have a different revision of the router with smaller flash which needs a different bootcmd. The only way to recover is to open it up and connect a usb to serial adapter

Ah I see.. do you know where I can buy a connector for that or if I can make one? I know what you’re talking about, it’s just a matter of me actually finding the right cable.

I've got three of these and in every case I've had to take them apart and connect the console. It's not as bad as you might think, but there are a couple things to deal with. I've seen two kinds of console connections. One is like the picture on this page.

Since you probably don't have a connector for that, it's possible to use regular jumper wires by taking one of the connectors out of its plastic insulator. The other type doesn't have a connector, just some holes in the board for one. I just solder some jumpers to the holes. In either case you're going to have to remove those two resistors from the other side of the board. This is much easier than you might think. I just separate the plastic from the board a little bit. That will leave about a quarter of an inch space. Then I use an X-acto knife to cut the resistors off. You'll find that it is quite easy. You might have to knock the resistors out of the router afterward, though. This is the hardest part about dealing with these things. But I'm sure you'll be happy with it when you're done.

2 Likes

@ghoffman I'm running into the same issue as you with a UBI init error 22. What did you to fix/get past this? This is after I tftpboot'd the initramfs.bin. This is a SAC2V1K but the U-Boot is v1.0.1 (my other one is v1.0.6.

Edit: logs - https://privatebin.net/?758d32b2de71541a#3puD9Zs8pX5TREmUc9MRJBH9f73gn6ad2AP1oMhmj8M3

Edit 2: looks like the interesting lines are here:

[    8.486634] UBI: auto-attach mtd20
[    8.486672] ubi0: attaching mtd20
[    8.493972] 8<--- cut here ---
[    8.493991] Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at virtual address 00000704
[    8.495919] pgd = 4c509831
[    8.504264] [00000704] *pgd=00000000
[    8.506684] Internal error: Oops: 5 [#1] SMP ARM
...
[    8.806697] Kernel panic - not syncing: Fatal exception
...
[    9.057475] Rebooting in 1 seconds..
...
UBI error: ubi_init: cannot attach mtd1
UBI error: ubi_init: UBI error: cannot initialize UBI, error -22
UBI init error 22

@lmore377

Are you sure the router is rev6 or rev10? If you run printenv in uboot one of the lines should say the revision

False alarm. I reseated all the wires after re-flashing the first one I had and that must have fixed it. Am able to boot into openwrt now. machid=177e so rev10. Thank you for the quick reply, I'm excited it's working! :smiley:

1 Like

Hi all, need some help from owners of RAC2V1K router. I bought one from eBay but foolishly did not ensure that it is sold with the power adapter (which it didn’t). Can those who owns one tell me if the DC plug is positive or negative polarity?

image

This is an image for positive polarity.

Thanks.

Judging by pictures in bad quality found via a quick search I'd say your picture shows the correct polarity.

I found some pictures, but not too sure if it's correct. Would hate to fry the router when I first plug it in ... haha.

Thanks.

Yes, this is correct polarity, the center pin is positive. I have used a power supply from my external HDD (Seagate). Here is the original power supply for this router (my):

Thank you @calipzone!

Having trouble with the Qualcomm Atheros QCA9984 802.11acn it wont boot up anyone got a fix. Ive selected a country code tried 00 and US

What channel do you have the card set to? If it's set to any channel between 52 and 140 then there will be a bit of a delay (1-10 minutes) before it'll start up and sometimes it won't start up at all. Those channels are DFS channels which basically means the wifi card has to scan the channel to make sure there isn't any radar or anything else that's more important currently using it. If it detects that something's there then it'll wait until whatever was there is gone before it starts transmitting.

This is why that whole process is so important: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/wi-fi-threatens-weather-forecasts

Ive tried many channels and I still cant get the radio to turn on

EDIT Channel 157 got it to work after setting country code