flashing the CFE from one brand to another

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slidermike
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 05, 2015 20:34    Post subject: flashing the CFE from one brand to another Reply with quote
Malachi asked this question in a sticky that we would rather not clutter up with questions so I am re-posting his question as a new/separate thread.

Quote:
Has anyone tried flashing the rt-ac68p cfe to the r7000? They seem identical hardware wise and we know some have done it with the ea6900 and rt-ac68u cfe.


Malachi, what would be the benefit of flashing the CFE from one device to the other?

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HalfBit
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 05, 2015 22:00    Post subject: Reply with quote
Would it allow you to run different stock firmware? Not that I personally would want to, but doesn't the firmware check against the CFE to make sure it's compatible?
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Malachi
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 05, 2015 23:07    Post subject: Reply with quote
I only asked because many have the reboot issue with the r7000.
My rt-ac68u runs with no reboots on any of these builds.
The rt-ac68p has a 1ghz cpu like the r7000, so I was thinking it may run with less reboots.
Sorry about posting in the sticky. I wasn't thinking.
I'll delete it.
Also some have complained about the stock fw, and we all know netgear's track record with abandoning units when new ones come out. They have the r7500 and r8000, so it shouldn't be long till no more firmware is being released.

With the rt-ac68p cfe, you could run stock asus, dd-wrt or Merlin.

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ghoffman
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 06, 2015 2:02    Post subject: Reply with quote
i asked this question in the r6300v2 thread.
might it solve some of the problems that were seen with reboots?

post post text:
Quote:

could some of the reset problems in r6300 be due to nvram issues like those reported for ea6900, and could these be solved by changing the cfe to that of ac68U?

from looking a the cfe's the platforms look very similar (differing only in boardnum)

r6300v2:
boardtype=0x0646
boardrev=0x1110
boardnum=697
boardflags=0x00000110
boardflags2=0x00000000

ac68u:
boardtype=0x0646
boardrev=0x1110
boardnum=00
boardflags=0x00000110
boardflags2=0x00000000

a6900:
boardtype=0x0646
boardrev=0x1110
boardnum=01
boardflags=0x00000110
boardflags2=0x00000000

the vlan setup is a little different also bu tthis is fixable with nvram.

any adventurers? i know there are much more knowledgeable people here who could examine these platforms to come up with an educated speculation
slidermike
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 06, 2015 2:21    Post subject: Reply with quote
The idea of changing the CFE sounds intriguing.
I do not have any idea how this is done but the discussion is worth having.

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Malachi
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 06, 2015 2:35    Post subject: Reply with quote
But the r6300v2 has a different radio than the rt-ac68u. Wouldn't that make a difference?
The radios in the r7000 and rt-ac68p are the same.
I'm expecting a used r7000 on Wednesday. I may try it.

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ghoffman
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 06, 2015 2:44    Post subject: Reply with quote
Malachi wrote:
But the r6300v2 has a different radio than the rt-ac68u. Wouldn't that make a difference?
The radios in the r7000 and rt-ac68p are the same.
I'm expecting a used r7000 on Wednesday. I may try it.

i dont know. it depends on how much info is in the firmware independent of cfe, and how general the cfe is. when i look at serial logs during boot, there's a lot of 'hardware not found' messages - to me, indicating the cfe has a list of hardware it checks for, and thus has somewhat more general capabilities than a super-specific platform.
Mangix
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 06, 2015 3:01    Post subject: Reply with quote
I recently went through the pain of doing this. Here are some notes.

You should edit the CFE of the other router to match the WPS pin, serial number, MAC address, and any other stuff specific to your router. All of these are found near the end of the CFE.

CFE files have default nvram values which should be copied to the new one. Otherwise you may get issues such as Ethernet ports not working, WiFi not working, general instability, etc.

I have no idea if just any CFE will work. In my case, I made sure both CFE files were for hardware that was almost identical (E1000v2 and E1200v1). You could get away with CFE files that have a slightly different CPU but I am not sure if the flash chips must be the same. I believe they must. Unless the OEM added support for multiple ones. This is likely actually. But again I am not sure.

So what did the CFE change do for me? 32 > 64k nvram. I originally wanted to flash it as I believed my original CFE had broken tftp support but I guess it did not. I just have no idea how to boot from tftp on these routers. No > 4MB firmware for me Sad.

As for flashing the CFE, somehow get the file into the router's RAM. wget and scp are the 2 things that come to mind. Then run
Code:
mtd unlock cfe
mtd write cfe.bin cfe
Malachi
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 06, 2015 3:02    Post subject: Reply with quote
Well i tried to flash the cfe from an rt-ac56u onto an ea6200 this weekend. Resulted in a brick.
The asus is dual core and the ea6200 has one core like the rt-ac56s.
I probably should have tried that cfe instead.

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rkaede
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 06, 2015 3:07    Post subject: Reply with quote
anyone try it with EA6700 ? i know its a dualcore. but not sure if its the same with AC68U
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slidermike
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 06, 2015 14:37    Post subject: Reply with quote
I like my r7000.
Since getting rid of my iPhone 4s I do not encounter the random reboots.

Though the idea of being able to put the CFE from the Asus in & then running merlin firmware would be awesome to me.
I would get the full hardware acceleration & I like what Merlin does with his firmware.

I just do not know enough about the process of replacing the CFE so I wont take the chance of bricking my otherwise awesome R7000.

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slidermike
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 06, 2015 17:59    Post subject: Reply with quote
Malachi appears to be correct that for the most part, the AC68u & r7000 share the same chipsets.

The one that is really different is the wifi power amplifiers.
I don't know if that matters but it is the biggest difference I can see from the 2 following wiki.

AC68U
https://wikidevi.com/wiki/ASUS_RT-AC68U_v1

R7000
https://wikidevi.com/wiki/Netgear_R7000

AC68U uses
5GHz Power Amplifier IC;Skyworks;SE5023L;SiGe, 5023L, <???>;3;
2.4GHz Power Amplifier IC;Richwave;RTC6649E;;3;

R7000 uses
2.4GHz Power Amplifier IC;Skyworks;SE2623L;SKY, 2623L, 322BD;3;
5GHz Power Amplifier IC;Skyworks;SE5003L1;5003L1, 243BE, 1243 MY;3;

If my R7000 wasn't my only router I would be interested in doing the CFE swap.

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<Kong>
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 06, 2015 18:10    Post subject: Reply with quote
Don't flash cfe from another unit. On older units this was not a big deal, but on newer units especially ARM/NAND you are asking for trouble.

1. Many differences in HW, e.g. RAM, some units have higher ram clocks etc.

2. Different antenna setup, amps etc. some units will embedd params for the hw in nvram, some have extra partitions for it ... Even if your unit will work and you can flash a different firmware, you will have trouble to correctly init the hw in order to have optimal working radios. Pretty much every oem has different flashlayout now mixing cfe/firmware can trash factory data from the other firm, so you won't be able to go back to original firmware.

3. If you fuck up cfe your unit is trash, can't just use simple jtag to reprogramm the flash. NAND units can only be reprogrammed with professional debuggers which cost more than $1000

4. Almost every model has different gpio implementation, if you flash asus fw to a netgear lights/buttons will not work correctly.
As far as I know even tomato guys still don't have the gpios for the R7000 right and thus resetbutton does not work, which caused a lot of trouble for users that wanted to try out tomato and came from dd-wrt.

Since I added GPIO code for the R7000 I can tell you exactly what will happen, if you manage to flash asus cfe and asus fw to the R7000. Your router will reset constantly:-)

I can't tell you what happens if you do this on the Linksys, as I haven't examined any broadcom arm linksys unit yet.
ghoffman
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 06, 2015 18:58    Post subject: Reply with quote
thank you kong. this is helpful as always!
Malachi
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 06, 2015 19:48    Post subject: Reply with quote
Kong, fractal said that if he didn't have time to get the ea6300v1 ported, he was going to send it to you.
Has anything happened with that?

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