TL-WDR3500 v1.3 Installing OpenWrt

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

Greetings All,

First time flasher of OpenWRT or any firmware for a router for that matter. I am looking for guidance on getting my above model running on the latest OpenWRT for it. The device page: https://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wdr3500 has both factory and sysupgrade packages. If I understand the steps correctly I flash the factory image, then after that the sysupgrade package? Sysupgrade will be done through the web GUI same as factory image correct? There is nothing else to do but configure the device once sysupgrade is done?

The official firmware for this device is ancient and I don't know if that is the cause for the device not keeping system time or for the device just hanging but I am hoping that by flashing OpenWRT system time will be kept and the device will be stable again. Otherwise I will have to buy a new device.

Thanks for the assist.

2

You only need the factory image when flashing from the OEM firmware.

The sysupgrade image is only needed for future upgrades from OpenWrt.

3

So I can just flash the factory image for my hardware level, 1.3, and be on my merry way? No need to do any fancy tricks like holding power button down for 6 seconds and so on? Nice.

4

If the currently installed OEM firmware (version dependant) doesn't enforce some special region requirements, no.

5

And what if it does (enforce some special region requirement)? That's precisely my problem!
Should I go through UART? If so, is there a doc somewhere?

6

should give some hints, as the tl-wdr3600 and tl-wdr4300 are very, very similar, you can borrow quite a lot of information from their device pages.

7

Thanks, I managed to flash it :slight_smile:

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