Help Needed: Bricked Xiaomi AX1800 (AX5/RA67) – U-Boot Corrupted, No LEDs, Garbage UART Output

Hardware Questions and Recommendations
1

I have a Xiaomi AX1800 router and unfortunately I’ve bricked it. I need advice on recovery options. Here’s the situation:

Hardware Info:

  • Architecture: ARMv7
  • SoC: Qualcomm IPQ6000
  • CPU: 1.2 GHz
  • RAM: 256 MB
  • Flash: F59D1G81MB, 128 MiB
  • Wireless 2.4 GHz: Qualcomm QCN5022 2×2
  • Wireless 5 GHz: Qualcomm QCN5052 2×2
  • Bootloader: U-Boot
  • Serial: Yes

Symptoms:

  • Router does not boot at all.
  • No LEDs light up.
  • UART connection gives garbage output, no meaningful bootloader prompt.
  • Flash activity: none.
2

I'm sorry it won't help much, but here are generic advices. Have you tried serial access before the bricking? I mean, are you sure of the pin connectors and settings to use? Furthermore I can't see any kind of support for this device.

3

The device is not supported by OpenWrt. Qualcomm wifi6 (ath11k) needs more RAM that it has if you peek at future support.

  • has it ever made a good TTL output (maybe eg wrong speed or voltage)
  • qca early boot parts are not open source, you will need them from xiaomi themselves (unlike mtk)
4

yes it was working before with serial

1 Like
5

You have to check with official warranty support, we are of no help reviving unrelated random device.

7

is worked before with openwrt

8

I’d like advice from anyone experienced with JTAG or SPI flash recovery on Qualcomm IPQ6000 devices.

1 Like
9

Not OpenWrt, but OEM firmware based on manufacturers DSP forked from OpenWrt 10 years or so ago. Thus any function added since is absolutely unrelated to current OpenWrt. Like wifi6

10

It appears you are using firmware that is not from the official OpenWrt project.

When using forks/offshoots/vendor-specific builds that are "based on OpenWrt", there may be many differences compared to the official versions (hosted by OpenWrt.org). Some of these customizations may fundamentally change the way that OpenWrt works. You might need help from people with specific/specialized knowledge about the firmware you are using, so it is possible that advice you get here may not be useful.

You may find that the best options are:

  1. Install an official version of OpenWrt, if your device is supported (see https://firmware-selector.openwrt.org).
  2. Ask for help from the maintainer(s) or user community of the specific firmware that you are using.
  3. Provide the source code for the firmware so that users on this forum can understand how your firmware works (OpenWrt forum users are volunteers, so somebody might look at the code if they have time and are interested in your issue).

If you believe that this specific issue is common to generic/official OpenWrt and/or the maintainers of your build have indicated as such, please feel free to clarify.