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Topic: Archer C5 (AC1200) Ver 2.0

The content of this topic has been archived on 17 Apr 2018. There are no obvious gaps in this topic, but there may still be some posts missing at the end.

Is anyone working on the Archer C5 Ver 2.0?
We just got in a shipment of 100 Ver 2.0.  Looks like the 1.2's are gone.
I believe we can order the C7 (AC1750) in places of C5 for now.
The Ver 2.0 of the C5 has a massive heat sink on the shielded enclosures on the PCB.  Perhaps  it has decent output power.

dslx wrote:

Is anyone working on the Archer C5 Ver 2.0?
We just got in a shipment of 100 Ver 2.0.  Looks like the 1.2's are gone.
I believe we can order the C7 (AC1750) in places of C5 for now.
The Ver 2.0 of the C5 has a massive heat sink on the shielded enclosures on the PCB.  Perhaps  it has decent output power.

Nope the heatsink is because it is Broadcom based.

Switched to the Archer C7 (Same as the old C5 hardware) just more expensive.
I see a Ver 3.0 of the C7 is coming out, hopefully this will continue to use teh Qualcomm/Athros chips.

Bump...
Is open wrt coming to the c5 v2? Just got one from Amazon (thought it was going to be a v1.2) and am wondering if I should try to return it. I'm fine waiting for a release just want to know if one is coming?

No.  Due to the Broadcom chipset licensing restrictions, it is not.  return it.
The C7 ver 2.0 is exactly the same as the C5 ver 1.0 so that is fine just sells for more....

BTW I hope everyone knows that the FCC is trying to eliminate 3rd party software for Routers.  This needs to be stopped.

Thx for the speedy reply! I'm getting a C7 tomorrow.

Hadn't heard that about the FCC, but I agree that doesn't sound good... If there are any petitions or anything circulating, post up a link!

w.r.t. the broadcom licensing bit - not sure why we couldn't just download the GPL release from Tp-link's website and adapt the config to suit?

What exact licensing bit is a problem with adding support for this Broadcom chip to OpenWrt?
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It looks from this table: https://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/views/toh_dev_platforms That the 47081 is supported on some other devices?
Is there something specific about C5 v2 that needs to be known? I'd like to run openwrt on my one smile

Bump ?
It'd be nice to know exactly what is needed to get this supported?
At the moment I'd settle for just SSH or telnet into the current firmware to get to iptables!

Happy to provide info - really just need to know what is needed to get it supported (given the 47081 chip is mentioned on other platforms - not sure what's missing).

I have one as well, but it looks like we'd need to figure out lots of stuff.
1. I don't think all of the code is available on the TP-Link site, look at the size difference in the v1 and v2 files.
2. If it is missing code, there would have to be a request to TP-Link to get the rest of the code.
3. I can download and try to compile the binaries, but that might not be of much use. I'm not experienced with developing for OpenWrt, so somebody would have to say what the next steps are.

I just took a short cut for my one..
Got into the serial console using the 4 pins on the board, user root, pass sohoadmin.
Added a USB stick and modified the TP-Link firmware init.rc to call a script on the USB stick, loaded that firmware and started an SSH session on a different port.

Then I compiled busybox binary and added these to the USB stick, and then scripted some iptables commands to achieve what I wanted it to do.

tocpcs wrote:

I just took a short cut for my one..
Got into the serial console using the 4 pins on the board, user root, pass sohoadmin.
Added a USB stick and modified the TP-Link firmware init.rc to call a script on the USB stick, loaded that firmware and started an SSH session on a different port.

Then I compiled busybox binary and added these to the USB stick, and then scripted some iptables commands to achieve what I wanted it to do.

So can you get the hardware addresses like shown for C5v1 and C7?

Not sure what you mean, can you be a bit more specific?

tocpcs wrote:

Not sure what you mean, can you be a bit more specific?

On wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wdr7500 it shows flash layout, ports, and hardware information. I'm suggesting you starting adding information if you can figure it out.

how did you get commandline access, the instructions on the page I linked above?

(Last edited by aaraya1516 on 12 Sep 2016, 05:14)

I posted up the flash layout from the boot log..  at this link:
https://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl … ash_layout

I'm not convinced that's the right spot for it because it's a different chip - it's almost a different router aside from sharing the same name as the other router - but I figure info out there is better than info not there.
Hopefully the wiki overlords can make a decision on how that case is better handled!!

I think you can also get that from binwalk'ing the firmware file - I think, I might be wrong.

What other hardware info do you need?
I've got SSH access to my one and I have a boot log from serial that I saved.

(Last edited by tocpcs on 12 Sep 2016, 08:20)

tocpcs wrote:

What other hardware info do you need?
I've got SSH access to my one and I have a boot log from serial that I saved.

I'm no expert here, I'm just hoping somebody with some skill can fill out the blanks for others to keep going.
There are a few blanks here: wiki.openwrt.org/toh/hwdata/tp-link/tp-link_archerc5ac1200_20
and it's also missing a few fields from: wiki.openwrt.org/toh/hwdata/tp-link/tp-link_archerc5ac1200_120

dslx wrote:

No.  Due to the Broadcom chipset licensing restrictions, it is not.  return it.

So, is there any chance the C5 v2 will ever be supported by OpenWRT? Or will this be impossible due to the chipset?

Unfortunately, I am not allowed to post links. So replace # by tt.

It looks like someone is working on this. I found the following commits:

  • Linux DTS: h#ps://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/arch/arm/boot/dts/bcm47081-tplink-archer-c5-v2.dts

  • LEDE commits: h#p://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/lede-commits/2017-May/003851.html

Does this help anyone to produce a working build?

Thanks for the update, darkdragon-001. Unfortunately I have since switched to the Archer C7 v2, so I can't test this :-\

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