Same as always, try flashing initramfs via the Recovery Utility and then use sysupgrade.
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OK, so I will follow tftp way.
Thanks
so... did it work?
Dear znevna,
Thanks for your reminder. The quick answer -- finally yes, it does. But I'm not sure I can reproduce the algorithm of flashing since lot of random stuff was made.
First of all the documentation is not that clear for newbie and this video (https://youtu.be/AAii7RxG1NY) helps to understand that the communication with router is interactive using terminal emulator (minicom in my case). My router didn't boot with USART to USB (PL2303) converter attached. I had to unplug serial adapter ground wire, then power on the router and then connect ground (the plugging in serial converter to usb after power on the router works as well). There is nothing printed in terminal of course so I just pressed enter, then it starts to boot and after reboot command I can see the boot menu.
Later I made mtd -r erase firmware and sysupgrade -n /tmp/*.bin several times as suggested in thread https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/issues/12674
serveral attemps finished with Error: no Image found at offset 0x003e0000
So I tried tbtpboot openwrt-22.03.5-ramips-mt7621-asus_rt-ax53u-initramfs-kernel.bin and mtd -r erase firmware again. Finally sysupgrade was sucesfull.
Many many thanks to community.
I don't get what instructions you are following. the video you linked is a wrong device. you should never use instructions for other devices on yours.
znevna suggested flashing the initramfs/kernel via the Asus Firmware Restoration Tool on Windows.
This doesn't require serial access.
(it might be possible to create a python tool like nmrp flash for Asus devices so we don't have to rely on windows anymore)
Finally: if you were to choose installation via serial and tftp, then you are supposed to flash the factory image like described here, not the initramfs (even though this worked)
Why did ssh mtd-write fail?
You are supposed to unplug the device from power after mtd-write finishes. you probably executed "reboot" instead (but this is just my assumption from what you wrote and I could be wrong)
Any news about this ?
Just tried the mtd-write method following https://openwrt.org/toh/asus/rt-ax53u#installation_with_mtd-write with both 22.03.5 and 23.05.0 versions, but none works here. It's always booting with stock as if nothing was done.
EDIT: eventually got 23.05.0 on my device using the Asus firmware restoration tool. My first attempt failed (not detecting the router), so I powered off the device, changed the cable from LAN 1 to LAN 3 and restarted the procedure again to flash initramfs and it worked. Then I just had to run sysupgrade to finalize the install of OpenWRT.