Belkin RT3200/Linksys E8450 WiFi AX discussion

This is a (potentially fatal) misunderstanding. The problem has not yet been addressed on the bootloader level. The opposite is true: If you run the installer for the very first time when the router still comes with stock firmware and bootchain, the driving strength of the SPI-NAND pins is setup by the stock bootloader at the time the new bootchain is written. If you update the bootloader later on (no matter in which way), you will use the potentially wrong lower values! So don't do it!

I've never observed OKD probably mostly for that reason: I revert to stock firmware and then run the installer for testing. I've never re-run the installer on a device which already runs OpenWrt and has been running any version of the installer before. I've also only briefly tested updating the bootloader using the U-Boot menu.

With OpenWrt 23.05.3 the driving strength values have been adapted to the values also used by the stock firmware in Linux (but not yet in TF-A and U-Boot!). I recommend users using the device in production to never touch the bootloader unless you really have to and stay with stable OpenWrt releases (currently 23.05.3).

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