Hi guys, I just got my dlink dir-615 up and running with openwrt 23.05.2, for those who are trying to accomplish the same I will make a short tutorial
First thing, backup your flash, I used a ch341a because it's easier for me, you can also backup the flash using your existing openwrt installation.
I removed all the system partitions (removed: nvram, mac, lp) and left only the u-boot, firmware and art, so you won't be able to return to the original firmware if you don't make a backup.
For the 16mb I used the Winbond 25Q128FV, the RAM is from a old 512mb DDR ram with the flash chip marked as K4H511638F-TCCC.
Now for the tutorial:
1- Flash the "breed-ar724x-reset12.bin" from breed u-boot
2- Flash the sysupdate.bin of my custom openwrt firmware in the breed uboot web interface and use the layout as TPLINK
3- Enable custom environments variable (see breed uboot manual)
4- telnet into uboot telnet 192.168.1.1 and type the command env set autoboot.command "boot flash 0x20000"
NOTE: the firmware has luci installed and the kmod-tun, all others kmods are avaliable in the .zip file
The system now has 9MB of free storage and a lot of RAM
3 Likes
In all the threads I've seen describing the initial mod to go from from 4MB flash to a larger chip, I have never seen a clear description of how exactly one should transfer the critical user-specific partitions (such as mac and art) from the original 4MB flash chip to the new 16MB one, and locate them at the correct addresses.
Apparently you'd already done this. (Or else perhaps determined that it wasn't actually necessary.)
Could you elaborate?
For those who, like me, are still struggling with the question of exactly how to do the initial conversion from the paltry 4MB stock flash chip, I've got an alternative 23.05.4 build up and running.
It is about as bare-bones as possible: No luci, no opkg, hostapd-mini, no other extras. I've got 156KB leftover for the overlay.
The factory install image is also too big; for anyone still on the stock OS, you'd need to start by installing an older openwrt build that has a small enough factory image, and then use that to sysupgrade to this one.
(I enabled zram for the sake of maximizing the use of my stock 32MB RAM. But I will have the means to upgrade it to 64MB soon; from what I understand that mod won't require any bootloader or OS changes.)
If @BrandonYeden doesn't object, I could post a link to my configuration and build here.
