Hello,
I have an old but solid Billion 8800AXL modem/router. It uses BCM63268, MX25L12845E flash and 4360 wifi chip. Accessing CFE I can turn off image checking, and install the Sky SR102 image. The CPU and Flash is OK (SR102 uses MX25L12805d which has same RDID). Wifi doesnt work - I believe that chip is not supported. Both USB ports work. The WAN (eth0.2, vlan 2 ports 3 8t) works fine, but the LAN (eth0.1, vlan 1, ports 8t 0 1 2) doesnt. No packets are seen or transmitted. There are no error messages. The weird thing is that the LAN lights flash with activity, the LAN switch forwards packets between its ports, and dmesg reports eth0.1 active!
I believe the switch is part of the 63268 - anyone have any idea why the LAN doesnt seem to be communicating with the OS? Or how I could debug this?
thanks in advance
This device doesn't appear to be supported by OpenWrt (the only one by this brand is the 7700N).
The Sky SR102 appears to have a different chipset than your device based on your description. And even if it is the same chipset, is there some indication that the boxes are identical (just rebadged)?
Thanks for the comment. I think what's in the TOH may be an earlier version - it refers to 63168. Running on the Billion doesnt' trigger the kernel panic check for a CPU mismatch, so is the same chipset. I don't think the box is rebadged, but obviously close enough that most functions work OK.
Well, most functions except the really important ones... the lan ports and wifi.
If the device is not identical, you can't rely on the image from another device. Assuming that they are really closely related, it is the small differences in the circuit level design between the 8800AXL and the SR102 that will likely make it impossible to get fully working with the image from the SR102.
However, If the chipset and high level design really are effectively the same, it would suggest that your device is theoretically supportable. The device specific details can presumably be adjusted such that it will run properly and can be added to the offically supported list.
I'm not a developer, so I can't help you directly, but with any luck, you and/or a developer can uncover those details -- the serial logs will be important (you might need to return to the stock firmware for a some data collection and tests), and you might need to do a bit of probing on the PCB to get some pinout/circuit level information in order to get a fully functional image.
Thanks again. For my intended use, the lack of LAN or Wifi is not an issue - a 4G USB dongle will supply internet, and one ethernet port is enough. The LAN is a "nice to have" - and I could use an RTL ethernet dongle anyway.
But I'd have thought that with the switch being on the SoC, that if it "partly" worked it'd ALL work. I was hoping there might be a Broadcom guru on the forum who might be able to explain why not!
I've run another model's OS from Billion on it, which has a busybox shell, and it shows the WAN and LAN as being "internal" and "external" ports respectively - whatever that means!
But if nothing else, I've learnt a lot from this exercise.....