tools/mkimage doesn't seem to do anything anymore. There's the tools-only target in the u-boot 2019.07 Makefile but I think you need some config to actually build anything. Patching the Makefile doesn't seem to help. I'm trying to build ath79 u-boot for NBG6616 because the zyxel u-boot is hopeless, you can make it load images from server and use nfs based rootfs but that's about it really, I think. My router just doesn't load anything through the eth ports.
Could someone with address in Germany maybe buy one of the last nbg6716's and then sell it to me? They have those on sale on Amazon.de but refuse shipping abroad. I live in Finland. I think this u-boot would work very well on that router and it has a bit better specs.
There's something odd with the openwrt toolchain because these both have the Scorpion cpu which is mips32 74kc and the toolchain is for 24kc which has lower clock frequency. The only 74kc openwrt has is Mipsel which is little endian when scorpion is big endian.
I found the Linux foundation version of the source package specific to the ap135 
board and I'm trying to build u-boot image with toolchain from mips.
You could try services like myGermany.com or mailboxde.com. Of course there are many more similar, I've just named random two.
Thanks for the tip. Zyxel agreed to send me one of those second hand units they still have so maybe I can get a working router after all. Looks like I need to make a little change to kernel configuration too as now it ends up as MIPS release 1. maybe it's just enabling the built in FPU emulation. The external toolchain I cant get to operation and it's already pretty old. Python is still missing from staging_dir but I can make it appear elsewhere maybe that will work out. wireless-regdb needs it I think.
@paulivil What is it you're trying to do? Are you trying to create a better u-boot loader for the NBG6616 using the one that ships with the NBG6716?
No, i have open source code for both routers but it is dated. There is a possible mismatch between u-boot 2009 and mkimage 2019 which makes it impossible to load the flattened image tree uimage I'd like to load. There's a chance that I could come up with 2016 u-boot loader which is Kconfig style. Failing that the dts based ath79 style is something to concentrate on, maybe it's just a question of copying ap152 board. All these are unlikely candidates for merge because you will need console access to update firmware, no support for factory images. Latest version of u-boot that I've got is the worst ever, doesn't even know any commands.
I think this is it, no way to make progress. I'll put out a warning or remove the repo. The router does boot but does nothing and doesn't accept any commands. No way to update because jtag no longer goes into init stage. If you comment out board_nbg6616 it won't reach that stage.
Not a hardware problem because I tried this with nbg6716 too. I bodged the jtag header soldering on that board so that's it too. I tried to desolder the mount points but they lifted off the board. The code has some chunks bypassed by zyxel and then streamlined by codeaurora back in 2017. There's very little explanation why these changes are made and none has been merged to ath79.
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