Alex,

Did you have any difficulties changing firmwares using Breed?

Regarding your comment about the insecurity of closed source firmware from relatively obscure web sites, I will note Breed is closed source too (though "only" a bootloader" and may have a backdoor. Das Uboot and its derivatives are open source bootloaders but you have to compile it yourself as best as I can tell.

OpenWRT CC works for the Mini at this time though the wireless performance is suboptimal because the open source drivers have not caught up completely.

Thanks.

@yogibear and @unmesh, thanks for the tip about Padavan firmware ...it has daily builds and working on my Xioami finally perfectly. So far no issues at all including those I have described above. Performance is great, signals are strong, no dropouts...simply excellent finally. (greatest would be Openwrt but who knows when it will get fixed).

For some of you, if interested , search for 4PDA and Padavan (not sure if it's allowed to post links to such sites directly...). There is even included some EPPROM "tuning" for 5GHz.....

Daily builds : https://routerclub.ru/upload/padavan/nightly/ (located under xrm_base folder)

Commits: https://bitbucket.org/padavan/rt-n56u/c … nch/master

(Last edited by sharkys on 19 Mar 2016, 17:00)

do you know the whole truth about EEPROM tuning?

I don't but check 4PDA, there is something more about that.

@unmesh: Yep, that's right. Breed is the same side on a different coin. Somehow I could switch back to u-boot, I guess, but for now the whole device is no option to me. I just gave it a try and in the end I was lucky to have it installed, because OpenWrt trunk nearly bricked my device.

i checked more than 400 pages of 4pda... they simply claim it fix offset without verifiying performance

mess with eeprom and you lose 30% of performance

easy to verify: https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/20343#comment:10

This is the reason why I have backup but thanks, I will test that.

(Last edited by sharkys on 19 Mar 2016, 21:52)

wouldn't count too much on backup. i have it too and after all these eeprom tests at one occasion i flashed back stock fw to check something and noticed i can't get full signal stength anymore on 5GHz. it is the same on openwrt,xiaomi or pandora...

You are saying even having backup of EEPROM, while putting it back, it will not help ? Hmmm, that's bad then.
I have been actually already running Openwrt on my Xioami in the past, would that influence EEPROM as well ? Trying content of another EEPROM will not help (eg. the one stored on https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/20343#comment:12) ?

(Last edited by sharkys on 19 Mar 2016, 22:18)

No, EEPROM partition is locked by default so you can't modify it thus meaning openwrt itself won't do any changes to it. Only if you follow those patch instructions and change it yourself may break your 5GHz wifi.

I have not tried anymore with any other EEPROM, i tried instead forcing the driver to work without EEPROM, but the AP didn't come up even though the logs showed everything is fine.

Hmmm...I thought by command : mtd_write write /tmp/mtd2.bin Factory I'm overwriting values in EEPROM. Nevermind. Thanks for info.

Another questions,  as for Padavan firmware as there is no QOS ... does anyone has got some idea how to "overcome" this limitation without compiling in QOS support ? Eg. I don't want to get the line utilized only by one client during download... others clients are having occasional timeouts. Nothing terrible, but still not ideal. So far I was able to limit given client on client side, which is not perfect as well.... Thank you.

(Last edited by sharkys on 20 Mar 2016, 18:14)

yes, but you have to build an image yourself and remove read-only; flag for factory partition to be able to overwrite it.

...ok, but I got successful UNLOCK everytime I used it. As I said anyway, never-mind already, now I'm rather wondering about QOS, but seems I will need to compile firmware myself.

Hi Sharkys, if you've successfully built padavan with QOS, hope you could share it with us too. I'm looking for QOS as well.

many thanks

Didn't have much time  yet to do so :-(

Someone can confirm this bug: https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/22086 ?
I have 3 differents Xiaomi with the same bug (same firmware build)

This was the reason I switched to Padavan FW from PandoraBox, wasn't using Openwrt however due to the weak signal bug - https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/20369

(Last edited by sharkys on 25 Mar 2016, 05:55)

Pls share link to Padavan FW

See post from 2016-03-19 16:53:50

Hi,

I've got a brand new router still in the box.....I've read through the thread and several other sites talking about the router and alternate firmware...found alot of 404 web pages and have seen that some of the firmwares have various issues including a weak signal on some bands...since I'm coming into this clean I'd like to know if I can install the breed bootloader FIRST so as to bypass the possibility of bricking my router?   Also as of today what is the recommended firmware that has the least issues.   I'd LIKE to be able to hook up my ZTE hotspot device via usb and I believe I read the only one supporting this was the "CC" build....of openwrt?   

I've downloaded the latest breed bootloader but can't find any actual installation instructions...just various people saying "oh you should use this..."....

Anyone know which firmware's do NOT support acting as a wifi bridge?  I'd need this feature if it didn't support the usb connection.

I did read the 03/19 post but nothing covered breed and things seem to be changing DAILY so thought I'd start off on the right foot.

(Last edited by famewolf on 26 Mar 2016, 07:16)

I use this guide: https://forum.lowyat.net/topic/3828356/all

basically it's this command:

mtd -r write breed-mt7620-xiaomi-mini.bin Bootloader

Thank you!  I had not seen that link and it had the details I needed...opening telnet etc to issue the commands while still in original chinese firmware.

when in original xiaomi fw and want to flash openwrt from enabled telnet console start ssh with:

nvram set ssh_en=1
nvram commit
/etc/init.d/dropbear enable
/etc/init.d/dropbear start
/etc/init.d/dropbear reload

login on default ssh port with username root and same password as for telnet. scp openwrt image and flash.

From what I read it works just as easily from telnet without the additional need for ssh.   Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

ok, how do you flash it from telnet? write your procedure please