DIR-825 B1 only recognising one ethernet cable at a time connected to the switch

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

Hi,

This is not very related with openWRT itself but maybe you are able to help me.
Stupid me replaced the default bootloader with breed and I did not made backups of anything :confused:
Since then I have been facing several issues. The first one was I had openWRT booting but it was not detecting the WIFI cards, so I decided to flash a different ART.bin from a chinese website. This made the wifi work and even raise the transmit power but now the switch part of the router is not working. The controller is RTL8366SR. It only accepts one cable at a time. if I connect other cables the port wont come up, only if I disconnect the previous connected cable, then the other port starts working but only in 100mbit mode. Only port 1 works in gigabit.

This is strange, because booting in breed it seems to recognize all ports and all of them work in gigabit mode.

Does anyone has the original bootloader/recovery bin?
would this solve the issue if I flash the original firmware on top?

What do you think is broken?

Thank you.

2

if you have used the BIG or Large what ever name it has
version your art partition may have been moved to the non standard address at the end of flash
you may find a copy there
here are 2 copy's of dir-825-b1's mtdo's
they are different I don't know why but I'd try the one that matches your mac address just in case

1 Like
3

Hi,
With BIG or Large, do you mean, FAT?
https://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/19.07.5/targets/ar71xx/generic/openwrt-19.07.5-ar71xx-generic-dir-825-b1-fat-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin

I didn't use this as I don't know what FAT means or what is the difference from the normal version.

I cannot access your download link.
Can you upload somewhere else?

Thank you.

4

yes that's it FAT it's description in link below

not sure where to put the they are hosted on my pc
so if you can't get to it I'm not sure where you can get to
you may have been unlucky & my internet has been a little flaky with extra covid traffic

any way you can't replace you factory calibrated RF data it was made for your board
calibrated to your board's RF stage with it's MAC addresses
just have a look at the last page of flash you could be lucky & find a copy

5

Can you please upload to wetransfer.com?
I'll try to check that last page later, but the issue I have is with the switch part of the router, everything else is working fine.
Booting into Breed, the ports are working fine, but when I boot normally in openWRT, it's like only switch port 4 (eth0.1), CPU (eth0) and WAN (eth1) are working.

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6
7

Hi,

There is a caldata_copy partition. Maybe it has the original ART data?

Anyway, here is dmesg output.

I see in the log the ports going to blocking state:

* [ 36.379013] br-lan: port 1(eth0.1) entered blocking state
* [ 36.384474] br-lan: port 1(eth0.1) entered disabled state
* [ 36.390156] device eth0.1 entered promiscuous mode
* [ 36.394989] device eth0 entered promiscuous mode
* [ 36.470707] br-lan: port 1(eth0.1) entered blocking state
* [ 36.476113] br-lan: port 1(eth0.1) entered forwarding state
* [ 36.481893] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): br-lan: link is not ready
* [ 36.550031] br-lan: port 2(eth1) entered blocking state
* [ 36.555322] br-lan: port 2(eth1) entered disabled state

I'll try some actions and come back. If you think you know what the issue could be, please let me know

Thank you for your help

8

Hi,

Just to update, I managed brick the router completely after replacing the mtd0 (u-boot) with your files :slight_smile: not blaming you. Maybe I did some mistake.
Then, I manged to find a complete firmware.bin file in the internet and bought a CH341A. De-soldered the Spansion S25FL064A and flashed it with the bin file. This brought the router back to life. This full firmware image had dd-wrt, so I booted into recovery and flashed the 2.04 original versions and then switched back to OpenWrt, flashing the latest version ath9.

Now I was trying to boost the wifi signal as the original signal, specially in the 5Ghz is quite weak, being set to only 17dBm. I have some art files for the ar9220 and flashed them to the caldata partition as there is no art partition avaialable and caldata is the one that makes sense, but after flashing it and rebooting the router, I see no differences in the wifi preferences.

When I had breed bootloader, there is an option there to flash art, and this allowed me to boost the wifi signal to 100mW (32dBm) if i'm not mistaken, but doing this via breed breaks the LAN ports.

So the question is, how to properly flash the art binaries and where?

Thank you.

ps: if necessary I can make a new post for this.

BR,
Tiago Afonso

9

you should never change your ART "radio Calibration Data"
it's generated as part of the manufacturing process to suit you hardware
and is made by profiling your device with specialize expensive radio equipment
if you have lost your original data your device will never work as well
unless you can send it back to the manufacture who can re-profile that specific device again

if you do have a copy of your original ART partition look up information about writing MTD's

and just to let you know the power limit is not set by the art partition
there maybe recommendations for the region in the world it was sold
but it's the software in this case the radio driver that set's the power output
in OpenWRT this is determined by the region you set in the country
and by the restriction laid out in that country's profile