ASUS EA-AC87 worth a try?

Hardware Questions and Recommendations
1

Hey there, I have this AP/Bridge lying around and would like to try to install OpenWRT.
I found these specs online:

I'm a bit confused, because seemingly this AP uses a Quantenna QT3840BC as a CPU, but in the Table of Hardware it's only ever listed as WLAN Hardware.
Is that just a mistake in the specs or could it really be the case.

I also made some pictures, if that helps:

front
front838×920 157 KB

back
back916×904 175 KB

serial
serial643×637 79.6 KB

If I understand this correctly, the 5GHz Quantenna Chipset is now supported for Wi-Fi, but i have no clue if it can also be used as a CPU.

Is this doomed, or is there a chance for this to work? If so can you tell me where to start?

2

It's a media bridge - so stock firmware likely is good enough.

For openwrt -- gosh, this is an 11 year old platform with a chipset vendor that is long lost - not sure Quantenna was ever a real thing...

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3

Please get a boot log from diagnostic ssh to asuswrt. Why your device is ripped open?

4

If wikidevi is correct, this device will not be supported by OpenWrt. Neither 2.4 GHz nor 5 GHz WLAN have drivers (well, technically firmware, same difference) nor are likely to 'ever' see a required firmware release.

Quantenna was a bit special, their wifi firmware blob is based on a an extremely stripped down linux image (no, you don't want to go there) - so if this is a very limited (fixed-function) device, that might be enough without a more capable SOC underneath (it is a SOC on its own, ecen if it's rarely used as such).

tl;dr: Unless wikidevi is 165° wrong, this device will never be supported by OpenWrt - and the sensible choice would be to run away screaming.

5

Ok i guess then, i will have to find something else to play around with OpenWRT.

Thank you all for your answers!

6

Lots of functioning toys in shops.

7

FWIW - with the stock firmware, it's a good device for the simple task it does as a wireless bridge over to ethernet.

Remember it's a 4*4:4 radio, not sure if they ever shipped Wave2 firmware, but that's not a big deal...

Potential use case - put it the media center and wire up all the devices there and run things over the single wifi link.

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8

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