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Topic: Tips for getting OpenWRT running on a new Ralink RT5350F device?

The content of this topic has been archived on 23 Mar 2018. There are no obvious gaps in this topic, but there may still be some posts missing at the end.

I picked up an iReceiver, a cheap WiFi audio receiver that supports AirPlay and DNLA. It works with the stock firmware, but I want to get OpenWRT running on it so I can take care of some stupidity in the networking configuration, and so I can use shairport-sync, instead of a dated version of shairport.

From my teardown, I know that it is based on a Ralink RT5350F, with 32MB RAM and 8MB of flash.

Using the serial headers I found, I've obtained access to the UBoot console, and, once linux boots, gained access to a root shell, which led me to a telnet server and a hidden webpage that I can use to fire it up.

From here on, I'm going to proceed cautiously because the device doesn't have an ethernet port, making recovery from a botched firmware more difficult. I am planning on building firmware that enables WiFi by default.

I guess my first question is whether I should do something about the bootloader. The stock uboot looks is based on Ralink's uboot version.

U-Boot 1.1.3 (Apr 23 2014 - 10:15:13)
[...]
============================================ 
Ralink UBoot Version: 4.2.S.1
 

It includes the loadb command to load an immage over serial using kermit, which I think should let me recover from a bad firmware version by loading a known-good version into over kermit and booting it. Unfortunately, it looks like loadb is/was broken in Ralink's u-boot.

Does anyone know if the bug is fixed in the version I'm using? Or, barring that, can anyone point me to a compiled bootloader with a working loadb for RT5350F boards that I can install?

I think that's it for now, though once I'm confident I can recover from a bad firmware, I may have more questions.  Thanks!

(Last edited by eas on 6 Jun 2016, 06:57)

Anyone?

4.2.S.1 is a quite old version

current is 5.0.1.0 as i know
and usually you don't need loadb cuz tftp recovery works flawlessly

Thanks.

I'm interested in LoadB because the device doesn't have wired ethernet, at least not without hacking on magnetics and a physical interface.

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