I purchased one of these to try out: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33046170123.html, and it has a version of OpenWRT installed, but it's not really usable. I can find any way to connect, and the configuration seems non-standard, so I can even figure out what the password would be to connect to the wifi AP that it brings up. Communicating with the store has not been very fruitful.
I can get to a failsafe command line, and the boot sequence looks like this:
***************************************
* U-Boot 1.1.4--clean *
* Build: 2017-08-02 *
***************************************
** Warning: bad env CRC, using default,
use 'saveenv' to save it in FLASH
BOARD: TP-Link TL-WDR3500
SOC: AR9344 rev. 3
CPU: MIPS 74Kc
RAM: 64 MB DDR2 16-bit CL3-4-4-10
FLASH: 8 MB Winbond W25Q64
PCIe: EP mode
MAC: 00:23:45:67:89:AB
CLOCKS: CPU/RAM/AHB/SPI/REF
550/400/200/ 25/ 25 MHz
Booting image from 0x9F020000...
Vendor/image name: OpenWrt unknown
Hardware ID: 0x35000001
Whole image size: 7.8 MB (8126464 bytes)
Kernel size: 1.1 MB (1138276 bytes)
Rootfs size: 2.1 MB (2176170 bytes)
Kernel load address: 0x80060000
Kernel entry point: 0x80060000
Header CRC... skipped
Data CRC... skipped
Stopping network... OK!
Uncompressing Kernel... OK!
Starting kernel...
[ 0.000000] Linux version 3.18.29 (david@david) (gcc version 4.8.3 (OpenWrt/Linaro GCC 4.8-2014.04 unknown) ) #45 Wed Feb 15 12:42:22 CST 2017
[ 0.000000] bootconsole [early0] enabled
[ 0.000000] CPU0 revision is: 0001974c (MIPS 74Kc)
[ 0.000000] SoC: Atheros AR9344 rev 3
[ 0.000000] Determined physical RAM map:
[ 0.000000] memory: 04000000 @ 00000000 (usable)
[ 0.000000] Initrd not found or empty - disabling initrd
[ 0.000000] Zone ranges:
[ 0.000000] Normal [mem 0x00000000-0x03ffffff]
[ 0.000000] Movable zone start for each node
[ 0.000000] Early memory node ranges
[ 0.000000] node 0: [mem 0x00000000-0x03ffffff]
[ 0.000000] Initmem setup node 0 [mem 0x00000000-0x03ffffff]
[ 0.000000] Primary instruction cache 64kB, VIPT, 4-way, linesize 32 bytes.
[ 0.000000] Primary data cache 32kB, 4-way, VIPT, cache aliases, linesize 32 bytes
[ 0.000000] Built 1 zonelists in Zone order, mobility grouping on. Total pages: 16256
[ 0.000000] Kernel command line: board=DB120 console=ttyS0,115200 rootfstype=squashfs,jffs2 noinitrd
[ 0.000000] PID hash table entries: 256 (order: -2, 1024 bytes)
[ 0.000000] Dentry cache hash table entries: 8192 (order: 3, 32768 bytes)
[ 0.000000] Inode-cache hash table entries: 4096 (order: 2, 16384 bytes)
[ 0.000000] Writing ErrCtl register=00000000
[ 0.000000] Readback ErrCtl register=00000000
[ 0.000000] Memory: 60944K/65536K available (2480K kernel code, 122K rwdata, 528K rodata, 252K init, 188K bss, 4592K reserved)
[ 0.000000] SLUB: HWalign=32, Order=0-3, MinObjects=0, CPUs=1, Nodes=1
[ 0.000000] NR_IRQS:51
[ 0.000000] Clocks: CPU:550.000MHz, DDR:400.000MHz, AHB:200.000MHz, Ref:25.000MHz
[ 0.000000] Calibrating delay loop... 274.02 BogoMIPS (lpj=1370112)
[ 0.070000] pid_max: default: 32768 minimum: 301
[ 0.070000] Mount-cache hash table entries: 1024 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
[ 0.080000] Mountpoint-cache hash table entries: 1024 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
[ 0.090000] NET: Registered protocol family 16
[ 0.090000] MIPS: machine is Atheros DB120 reference board
[ 0.540000] Switched to clocksource MIPS
[ 0.550000] NET: Registered protocol family 2
[ 0.550000] TCP established hash table entries: 1024 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
[ 0.550000] TCP bind hash table entries: 1024 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
[ 0.560000] TCP: Hash tables configured (established 1024 bind 1024)
[ 0.570000] TCP: reno registered
[ 0.570000] UDP hash table entries: 256 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
[ 0.580000] UDP-Lite hash table entries: 256 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
[ 0.590000] NET: Registered protocol family 1
[ 0.590000] futex hash table entries: 256 (order: -1, 3072 bytes)
[ 0.610000] squashfs: version 4.0 (2009/01/31) Phillip Lougher
[ 0.620000] jffs2: version 2.2 (NAND) (SUMMARY) (LZMA) (RTIME) (CMODE_PRIORITY) (c) 2001-2006 Red Hat, Inc.
[ 0.640000] msgmni has been set to 119
[ 0.650000] io scheduler noop registered
[ 0.650000] io scheduler deadline registered (default)
[ 0.660000] Serial: 8250/16550 driver, 1 ports, IRQ sharing disabled
[ 0.670000] console [ttyS0] disabled
[ 0.690000] serial8250.0: ttyS0 at MMIO 0x18020000 (irq = 11, base_baud = 1562500) is a 16550A
[ 0.700000] console [ttyS0] enabled
[ 0.700000] console [ttyS0] enabled
[ 0.710000] bootconsole [early0] disabled
[ 0.710000] bootconsole [early0] disabled
[ 0.720000] m25p80 spi0.0: flash id: 362e8307a78468df
[ 0.720000] m25p80 spi0.0: found s25fl064k, expected m25p80
[ 0.730000] m25p80 spi0.0: s25fl064k (8192 Kbytes)
[ 0.740000] 5 tp-link partitions found on MTD device spi0.0
[ 0.740000] Creating 5 MTD partitions on "spi0.0":
[ 0.750000] 0x000000000000-0x000000020000 : "u-boot"
[ 0.750000] 0x000000020000-0x000000136064 : "kernel"
[ 0.760000] 0x000000136064-0x0000007f0000 : "rootfs"
[ 0.770000] mtd: device 2 (rootfs) set to be root filesystem
[ 0.770000] 1 squashfs-split partitions found on MTD device rootfs
[ 0.780000] 0x000000350000-0x0000007f0000 : "rootfs_data"
[ 0.780000] 0x0000007f0000-0x000000800000 : "art"
[ 0.790000] 0x000000020000-0x0000007f0000 : "firmware"
[ 0.810000] libphy: ag71xx_mdio: probed
[ 1.410000] ag71xx-mdio.1: Found an AR934X built-in switch
[ 1.450000] eth0: Atheros AG71xx at 0xba000000, irq 5, mode:GMII
[ 2.050000] ag71xx ag71xx.0: connected to PHY at ag71xx-mdio.1:04 [uid=004dd042, driver=Generic PHY]
[ 2.060000] eth1: Atheros AG71xx at 0xb9000000, irq 4, mode:MII
[ 2.060000] TCP: cubic registered
[ 2.070000] NET: Registered protocol family 17
[ 2.070000] bridge: automatic filtering via arp/ip/ip6tables has been deprecated. Update your scripts to load br_netfilter if you need this.
[ 2.090000] 8021q: 802.1Q VLAN Support v1.8
[ 2.100000] VFS: Mounted root (squashfs filesystem) readonly on device 31:2.
[ 2.110000] Freeing unused kernel memory: 252K (80371000 - 803b0000)
[ 3.190000] init: Console is alive
[ 3.190000] init: - watchdog -
[ 5.240000] init: - preinit -
[ 5.550000] random: procd urandom read with 8 bits of entropy available
Press the [f] key and hit [enter] to enter failsafe mode
Press the [1], [2], [3] or [4] key and hit [enter] to select the debug level
f
- failsafe -
BusyBox v1.23.2 (2016-10-31 14:48:11 CST) built-in shell (ash)
ash: can't access tty; job control turned off
_______ ________ __
| |.-----.-----.-----.| | | |.----.| |_
| - || _ | -__| || | | || _|| _|
|_______|| __|_____|__|__||________||__| |____|
|__| W I R E L E S S F R E E D O M
-----------------------------------------------------
CHAOS CALMER (Chaos Calmer, unknown)
-----------------------------------------------------
* 1 1/2 oz Gin Shake with a glassful
* 1/4 oz Triple Sec of broken ice and pour
* 3/4 oz Lime Juice unstrained into a goblet.
* 1 1/2 oz Orange Juice
* 1 tsp. Grenadine Syrup
-----------------------------------------------------
================= FAILSAFE MODE active ================
special commands:
* firstboot reset settings to factory defaults
* mount_root mount root-partition with config files
after mount_root:
* passwd change root's password
* /etc/config directory with config files
for more help see:
http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/howto/generic.failsafe
=======================================================
root@(none):/#
I can't even get it to break into uboot.
Uboot seems to think it's similar to a TP-Link WDR3500. I would like to try to just flash some standard distribution on it and see if it works.
The problems are:
- I can't get into u-boot
- I can't get ethernet or wifi to configure from failsafe. Ethernet might be a hardware issue, since it just has 4 pins for ethernet, and I'm not sure that I can just connect those to a cable and plug it into a router (tried and didn't work).
- If I let it boot fully I don't get a login prompt, but I do get an AP on wifi. Unfortunately I don't know the login information.
I have a uart connection to the console, and I can get to a root prompt, so I think there's hope, but I don't know where to go from there. Is there any way to load an image over uart from a command line and flash it, or might there be something I might be missing to get into u-boot?
Any suggestions would be appreciated.