I'm working on a Brazilian router, Intelbras WRN 240 V2, and I'm hitting a wall with Error 18004 when trying to flash OpenWrt via Web UI.
Hardware Discovery: After some research and opening the case, I've confirmed this is an OEM rebrand of the TP-Link TL-WR743ND v1.
CPU: Atheros AR7240
RAM: 32MB (Zentel A3S56D40FTP-G5)
Flash: 4MB (Spansion FL032PIF)
OS: Original vendor firmware (Intelbras) based on a 2012 build.
The Problem: I've tried flashing openwrt-15.05.1-ar71xx-generic-tl-wr743nd-v1-squashfs-factory.bin and the WR740N equivalent, but the vendor's Web UI rejects them with Error 18004 (Hardware ID mismatch).
Technical Details: I've extracted the original firmware from the vendor's setup .exe (it was hidden as a .dll). I am a Linux user and comfortable with the terminal.
My Questions:
Does anyone know the specific Hardware ID (HWID) for the Intelbras WRN 240 V2?
Is there a known header modification (using dd or a hex editor) to make the OpenWrt factory image acceptable to this vendor's bootloader?
Has anyone successfully used TFTP recovery on this specific OEM board? (I've tried 192.168.0.66 with the standard TP-Link recovery filenames but no luck so far).
Any help or pointers to a "factory-to-openwrt" image with the correct header would be greatly appreciated!
The device you're dealing with may have a minor hardware difference and/or may simply be flashed with a different identifier. However...
This device is entirely obsolete based on the 4/32 specs. You're trying to use OpenWrt 15.05 which is over a decade old and is has been EOL and unsupported for the better part of the last 10 years. This version has many known serious security vulnerabilities, and is thus not safe to run. That is, of course, not even mentioning that the release is totally unsupported -- even the config syntax is no longer "top of mind" for anyone using modern OpenWrt.
The best thing you can do is e-cycle that device and get newer hardware that can run a modern version of OpenWrt (minimum 8/64, recommended 16/128 or better).
Adding support for this device is pointless now. I'm sure you should be able to TFTP flash via UART. If you're sure it's 100% identical you need to force flash sysupgrade from wr743nd v1. But I would recommend to pickup latest but still EOLed OpenWrt 18.06.9.
I disagree with this advice. Do not even bother with a device that is EOL'd from OpenWrt. If you pay anything for it, it's too much. Even free, you'll spend time and energy on a device that is not supported and has many potentially serious security vulnerabilities.