Hi all, at one time the DIR-601 was a supported model for openwrt, but that hasn't been the case for quite some time, as its original configuration is 4MB/32MB, and support for it has been dropped in the latest builds. I have upgraded my DIR-601 to 16MB/64MB. I have downloaded the openwrt source, and I'd like to go about creating a new build to support it. How do I go about adding this model back in? Is it slightly easier since it was once a supported model?
Copy / paste from my other response. But getting it back upstream is something I can't answer. But IDK whether soldering is within the scope of normal support in openwrt =P
There is no way back for a 4/32 device.
If you have upgraded flash&RAM successfully, that makes your continued maintenance easier (and is the only way to keep this device working for you in the first place), but that makes it a one-off modified device - which won't be supported by OpenWrt (because you're its only user).
so I can appreciate that as a project openwrt won't ever resupport this router...but I have the source and I'm willing to build from source, so I'd like to make my local copy of source support this router. I think this is possible...I'm just not sure how, and I'd like a little guidance on how to make it happen.
In your case, most of the legwork needed for your locally-maintained device support patch is already done, since the device was supported before.
It'll probably boil down to: Find (ideally) a very similar device (SOC and WIFI), that is still supported because it had more MEM/Flash to start with, and copy+adapt the DTS/recipe of that one to match yours.
In the source, look at the files in target/linux/ath79/dts/ar7240*.
Thanks, this is what I thought...I started by making a local copy of the 17.0.1 checkout (the last OpenWRT that supported the DIR-601) so that I can grep it and find all of the files that are associated with my device. My thoughts then are to copy them over to my up to date source. After this I have to find a device that has a similar flash layout, but in 16M, and copy/adapt it. But this is where I feel I'm going to stumble a bit. I'm not sure where/how the partition structure is identified in the OpenWRT build system for me to be able to adapt it for my model. Are there any guides for this? Or is there some common structure that I don't need to worry about it, I just need to tell OpenWRT how big the flash is, and it will sort out the rest?
Throw away the 17.0.1 stuff. Those were the mach-files ages, long since replaced by DTS/ath79
Check out a recent snapshot source, find the target/linux/ath79/dts/ directory, and browse through the ar7240 files. There is a device with 16MiB flash and 64MiB ram.
What's on the 16MiB flash currently? The original 4MiB rom in the first 4 MiBs? Do you have a working boot-loader you can interact with?
Oh ok, thanks! I'll start there and see where I end up.
What about the GPIO, network, board.d files, etc that are talked about in the adding new device page? Can't I use some information from the 17.0.1 release to help me with that?
Yes, some of the information you might need to patch into your new DTS may be most easily figured out by reading some original files. But don't attempt to build that old stuff.
if you can tftp-RAM-boot images from the bootloader serial prompt, then you can easily test out images you build