DLink DIR-853 A3

For Developers
210

HI all,

First of all the big disclaimer

FLASHING YOUR DEVICE WITH UNSUPPORTED FIRMWARE CAN BRICK IT. I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE NOR IS OPENWRT IF THE PROCEDURE BRICKS YOUR DEVICE

Now this is out of the way, I will no longer compile padavan for the Dlink DIR-853 A3. Instead the focus will be on openwrt. This is due to the face that we are in their forum :sweat_smile: plus the padavan source code I used has had only a few updates in the last few months (or even a year) while openwrt has several commits a day.

Also this will let your downlaod any package from the massive openwrt repository. you can use Luci in the software section.

The only issue at the moment is that the wireless file needs to be edited manually. Using luci with dbdc does not work correctly. I am attaching a sample after this post to which you can use from ssh to edit /etc/config/wireless and change it to your needs.
Please make sure you use all the options are the router might hang if not (it should be recoverable with the reset button).

There will be 2 procedures here. One (the easy one) will be for people on the stock firmware. The second one will be for people already on padavan.

STOCK FIRMWARE:
Downlaod the following file and upload from the web interface. Please check before flashing the sha256sum which should be the one below. Users on padavan please do not attempt to flash this on your device (as it is encrypted). It can potentially brick your device although the router should be able to recover.

4a288a97d30ab338ad2d3583e77d5f6b4cafc113ac27347a990e0a4ce44aef16  openwrt-21.02.0-rc2-ramips-mt7621-dlink_dir-853-a3-squashfs-factory-enc.bin

PADAVAN
For padavan please download the unencrypted file below and check the sha256sum. Use scp ro copy the file to the router in the /tmp folder. Another option would be to use a fat32 formatted usb stick and copy the file to it. Then plug the USB into the router and use mount to check where it is mounted.

fa669f0f2ea6b10d8713543a7f02258e4eee7b05bfa455fda90964613e156425  openwrt-21.02.0-rc2-ramips-mt7621-dlink_dir-853-a3-squashfs-factory.bin

You can then copy the file to the /tmp folder. for there use the following commands.

cd /tmp
mtd_write erase Kernel
mtd_write erase Config
mtd_write erase Storage
mtd_write write openwrt-21.02.0-rc2-ramips-mt7621-dlink_dir-853-a3-squashfs-factory.bin Kernel

optionsally you can check that the flash is correct with the following command. in theory you should get the same result (since we are deleting the partition before flashing.

 sha256sum /dev/mtd3
35ae5f899498707c62fcd122a81259936ed05813de16e9d47e54bd2f506d80df  /dev/mtd3
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