Thursday, 23 January 2014

Mini USB Portable 3G/4G router - rt5350f - 32M version


Short description how to upgrade router with 32 MB on board.

Source: http://www.ebay.de/itm/400572464175?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649

Body:


PCB is exactly the same, only resistor to set mem size to 32m has been added.

Bootloader

Default u-boot bootloader is not fully functional, and it seems that it is protected against starting other firmware than oryginal one.
Do not try to upgrade this bootloader from bootloader menu - you will brick your device  !

To load openwrt firmware new bootloader is needed - I am using - uboot256.img taken from JiapengLi

Openwrt firmware

Default firmware cannot accept openwrt images so at the beggining (after u-boot upgrade) we will load minimal openwrt firmware mini.bin .
Upgrade procedure

Verification
Check twice if it is router we are talking about:

  • Take a look on photos of PCB
  • Check MDT structure by call "cat /proc/mtd", has to be like below:
cat /proc/mtd
dev: size erasesize name
mtd0: 00400000 00010000 "ALL"
mtd1: 00030000 00010000 "Bootloader"
mtd2: 00010000 00010000 "Config"
mtd3: 00010000 00010000 "Factory"
mtd4: 003b0000 00010000 "Kernel"
          Think twice :)

First step

  • Reset router to default settings
  • Connect to router via telnet and login with default user name (admin) and password (admin)
  • Now  you can upgrade router via FTP or USB

Upgrade via FTP 

  • Cceck free memory

  • Verify free memory by calling free, check if you have more than  3500 free memory 
     
# free     total   used   free  shared buffersMem: 28584  17128  11456     0      0Swap: 0 0 0Total: 28584 17128 11456
  •  Resize TMP, and start proftp server
mount -o remount,size=4M tmpfs /tmp
proftpd.sh server 192.168.100.1 192.168.100.1 21 10
proftpd
  • Connect to router via ftp and copy uboot256.img and mini.bin to /tmp directory on router
  • ! Upgrade uboot - be careful, do not reset router during and after this operation !
mtd_write write  /tmp/uboot256.img Bootloader
  • You should see on console 
#Unlocking Bootloader ...
#Writing from /tmp/uboot256.img to Bootloader ...  [w]
  • ! Upgrade firmware - do not reset router during this operation!
mtd_write write /tmp/firmware.img Kernel
  • You should see on console  
#Unlocking Kernel ...
#Writing from /tmp/mini.bin to Kernel ...  [w]
  • Reboot router :), enjoy new u-boot with working ethernet and openwrt firmware. Now you can use standard openwrt upgrade procedure. 
reboot 
  • Router will set IP address to 192.168.100.1 , you can login via telnet

Upgrade via USB

  • Prepare usb stick, format it with fat filesystem, and copy  uboot256.img and firmware.img 
  • Conect usb stick to router and mount it by:
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
  • Wait a few seconds and verify  if you see files
ls /mnt 
  • You should see content, do not go further if you do not see files ! 
uboot256.img mini.bin
  • ! Upgrade uboot - be careful, do not reset router during and after this operation !
mtd_write write  /mnt/uboot256.img Bootloader
  • You should see on console 
#Unlocking Bootloader ...
#Writing from /mnt/uboot256.img to Bootloader ...  [w]
  • ! Upgrade firmware - do not reset router during this operation!
mtd_write write /mnt/mini.bin Kernel
  • You should see on console  
#Unlocking Kernel ...
#Writing from /mnt/mini.bin to Kernel ...  [w]
  • Reboot router :), enjoy new u-boot with working ethernet and openwrt firmware. Now you can use standard openwrt upgrade procedure. 
reboot
  • Router will set IP address to 192.168.100.1 , you can login via telnet 



Many Thanks for martin4android for support and materials.


Posted by at

78 comments:

  1. Дмитрий Лялин7 May 2014 at 23:38

    I have same router with 32Mb of RAM. But it has reduced busybox with only 10 commands: clean, ping, traceroute, ipmac, quit, show, restart_httpd, restore_defaults, ated. So I can't flash it using this manual. The only way to flash is to do it from web-interface or using bootloader menu.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Дмитрий Лялин27 May 2014 at 03:21

      I flashed it successfully using UART cable from u-boot menu and tftp connection (I did not change u-boot, only firmware).

      Delete
  2. Вася Попкин9 May 2014 at 04:21

    Good afternoon.

    Please.
    Take a picture of your Mini USB Portable
    I wanted to see how the resistors installed
    I want to change the memory from 16mb to 32mb
    I want to remove my chip em639165ts-6g
    I want to put a chip em63a165ts-6g.
    in my Mini USB Portable
    I want to put Openwrt in my Mini USB Portable

    thank you

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Дмитрий Лялин27 May 2014 at 03:16

      Here you can find pictures of my router:
      http://4pda.ru/forum/index.php?showtopic=377187&view=findpost&p=31346654

      Delete
    2. Дмитрий Лялин27 May 2014 at 03:18

      SMD components are not marked, what resistor do you want me to measure?

      Delete
  3. Milan Spacek30 May 2014 at 13:58

    Hi. I buy a 16MB variant. Flash new uboot128 and openwrt. Everything work good, but 16MB ram is not good for work with wifi.

    I buy 32MB chips and solder it to the router. I solder 3,3K resistor for detection 32MB ram..... but only 16MB is detected on uboot and kernel. How can I flash uboot256 to the device? MTD partitions have other names, but adresses are same as factory... but if i try write to MTD, i have this error

    root@OpenWrt:/tmp# mtd write /tmp/uboot256.img u-boot
    Could not open mtd device: u-boot
    Can't open device for writing!

    Please help me.. I spend lot time with desoldering and soldering ram chip, and I was sad when I see only 16MB ram and wifi make reboots and out of ram.

    ReplyDelete
  4. 3D Makers30 May 2014 at 14:06

    Hi, have you try images mentioned here http://my-embedded.blogspot.com/2014/01/mini-usb-portable-3g4g-router-rt5350f.html ?

    provide output of : cat /proc/mtd

    ReplyDelete
  5. Александр Криль24 June 2014 at 14:12

    Доброе время суток! Ребята у меня накрылся роутер после неудачной прошивки. Все время горит красная лампочка и не как не могу вернуть его к жизни. Пытался через telnet, устанавливает, загораеться синяя лампочка. Но не реагирует.. После выключения питания заново загораеться красная.

    ReplyDelete
  6. 3D Makers24 June 2014 at 14:22

    Have you setup IP on PC to for example 192.168.100.10 and connect to router ip 192.168.100.1 ? I am asking because some forget that router after restart have fixed ip 192.168.100.1 and no dhcp.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Александр Криль25 June 2014 at 02:42

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Александр Криль25 June 2014 at 02:44

    Я выставлял на сетевой карте 192,168,100,2 и пробовал прошить прошивками указанами выше. Только после прошивки роутера, загорелась синяя лампочка. Жду 5 минут, перегружаю и снова красная.... Сейчас попробую изменить ip.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Александр Криль25 June 2014 at 08:52

    У когото есть официальная прошивка?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. DooMmen6 July 2014 at 05:49

      http://www.edtv8.com/English/Support/Update/

      Delete
    2. Александр Криль6 July 2014 at 12:57

      Спасибо. К сожалению не совместимо..=(

      Delete
  10. Paulo Meireles22 September 2014 at 13:56

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Paulo Meireles22 September 2014 at 13:58

    Hi, I also bought a 16MB one(precisely equal to the pictures shown here) and followed your instructions by downloading uboot128.img and firmware.img from http://rcc.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/projects/rt5350_mini_router/img/ and putting it on a USB stick. All seemed to go as described. However, despite being able to telnet:
    1 - There's nothing listening on port 80 (so, no web interface)
    2 - ls /dev doesn't show any sda1 device (so, no access to USB stick)
    3 - proftpd.sh doesn't seem to exist (so, no FTP)

    There doesn't seem to be an easy way to flash a different firmware. I already placed an order on a UART cable, but I'll have to wait a couple of weeks for it to get here. Is there anything I can do while I wait? What have I done wrong, and how can I recover from it?
    Thanks in advance.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Paulo Meireles22 September 2014 at 16:26

    Hi, after some trial and error I managed to get the firmware into the router with wget from a tiny web server on my PC. However, everyone seems to agree that 16MB is too short for using lan+wifi. I wish I could flash it with Hame A15 firmware... :(

    ReplyDelete
  13. 3D Makers24 September 2014 at 14:15

    Hi Pablo,

    in mini.bin only telnet is included. If you would like more services, download appropriate image from http://rcc.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/projects/rt5350_mini_router/img/.

    But with 16 MB web interface is not stable, until you will not enable swap on USB stick or upgrade RAM to 32MB, the same issue is with WIFI.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Gareth Bryan10 October 2014 at 11:52

    Hi,

    I've got 4x very similar devices (but not quite) and wondered if you could give me some pointers!

    Initially they had the limited shell "BoC Router", but these devices have more holes than swiss cheese so happily have a full busybox instance now :)

    RAM = em63a165ts-7g (32mb) (143mhz vs 166mhz of the -6)
    Flash = pm25lq032 (4mb)

    # cat /proc/mtd
    dev: size erasesize name
    mtd0: 00030000 00010000 "Bootloader"
    mtd1: 00010000 00010000 "Config"
    mtd2: 00010000 00010000 "Factory"
    mtd3: 003b0000 00010000 "Kernel"
    mtd4: 003b0000 00010000 "Romfs"
    mtd5: 003b0000 00010000 "Firmware"

    ...
    Warning: un-recognized chip ID, please update SPI driver!
    AT25DF321(1f 47000000) (4096 Kbytes)
    mtd .name = raspi, .size = 0x00400000 (4M) .erasesize = 0x00010000 (64K) .numeraseregions = 0
    Creating 6 MTD partitions on "raspi":
    0x00000000-0x00030000 : "Bootloader"
    0x00030000-0x00040000 : "Config"
    0x00040000-0x00050000 : "Factory"
    0x00050000-0x00400000 : "Kernel"
    0x00050000-0x00400000 : "Romfs"
    0x00050000-0x00400000 : "Firmware"


    So different flash and a weird looking MTD layout.

    I've never really dabbled with OpenWRT so any pointers you could give me in mapping these (presumably to a modified mpr-a1 dts?) and building an image - it would be much appreciated!

    Thanks again.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. מיקי25 June 2016 at 23:35

      This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
  15. 3D Makers22 October 2014 at 13:51

    Hi,

    hard to help, you have to start lstuddy openwrt build system, setup development environment and start to play.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Gareth Bryan29 October 2014 at 08:07

    A couple of weeks of studying, playing and reverse engineering parts of the original firmware - and my patch has now been accepted into trunk.

    https://dev.openwrt.org/changeset/43102/trunk

    Just flash from the GUI :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. ilach3 December 2014 at 15:48

      Please, it is possible upload somewhere this your firmware? Thank you.

      Delete
  17. macau ap25 November 2014 at 00:32

    I have a 32M clone with bad uboot - cyclic network drops with illegal image, so i cant update uboot or data via tftp.
    TIMEOUT_COUNT=10,Load address: 0x80100000
    Loading: *
    ArpTimeoutCheck
    T T T T T T T T T T
    Retry count exceeded; starting again
    Trying Eth0 (10/100-M)

    ETH_STATE_ACTIVE!!

    any clues?

    ReplyDelete
  18. macau ap25 November 2014 at 11:26

    Self response: if anyone flash wrong bootloader (via uart-tftp) and catch network loop-down and impossible to flash anything, u may dont desolder flash and have a sex with spi. just use kermit and uart:
    on uboot side select 7 (flash uboot via kermit)
    on linux host side run and configure c-kermit:
    set port /dev/ttyUSB0 (or your tty-uart node)
    set speed 57600
    set carrier-watch off
    set flow-control none
    set prefixing all
    send /path_to_correct_uboot_image

    wait some minutes and viola!

    ReplyDelete
  19. mitchell 4you23 February 2015 at 14:37

    http://www.gearbest.com/development-boards/pp_121994.html
    any thoughts about this pcb... cheers

    ReplyDelete
  20. rosangen3 April 2015 at 00:30

    Have anyone measure the power consumption for this device.
    I'm planning to use a 3G dongle Huawei E173, and power it from a solar/battery station.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Samm3 August 2015 at 09:53

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  22. Антон Дергач10 October 2015 at 17:22

    Добрый день!
    Прошил роутер по инструкции выше, зашел через telnet, поставил пароль root по команде passwd root и теперь не могу подключиться по ssh.
    Кто-то может подскажет куда копать?
    Заранее спасибо.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Grzegorz Mirek10 November 2015 at 02:35

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Unknown27 March 2016 at 10:46

      Hi
      all worked but after change of passwd no ssh was possible.

      plz check

      https://forum.openwrt.org/search.php?action=show_user_posts&user_id=149526

      thx

      Delete
  24. Dii Kwadd30 March 2016 at 16:22

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Anonymous28 April 2016 at 04:34

    Hello, I've got a problem concerning the IP address: you say that the IP is 192 .168. 100.1 after reboot, however when I try to manually set my IP to 192.168.100.2 the router cannot be found. DHCP on ethernet does not work either.

    Any help ?

    ReplyDelete
  26. Anonymous28 April 2016 at 11:11

    Actually it does work, it was just a question of netmask and gateway.

    ReplyDelete
  27. zoulou_fr1 May 2016 at 15:43

    Mine did not have ftp but samba. So I did put the file setting up samba :
    samba.sh hostname WORkGROUP
    smbpasswd admin admin
    samba_add_dir.sh tmp /tmp admin
    smbd
    nmbd

    then access \\192.168.100.1\tmp with login admin admin

    ReplyDelete
  28. Unknown10 June 2016 at 01:18

    Hi, the img and bin files are no longer available (404). Can you please upload them somewhere?

    ReplyDelete
  29. Peter Scargill4 July 2016 at 08:00

    proftpd does not exist on the board

    ReplyDelete
  30. Peter Scargill4 July 2016 at 08:16

    none of the image files mentioned still exist on the web.

    ReplyDelete
  31. Ajith S8 July 2016 at 02:23

    I used images from http://ofmodemsandmen.com/download/GoldenOrb/a5-v11-GO2016-04-01.zip.It contains all.Also check OpenWrt page

    ReplyDelete
  32. Ajith S8 July 2016 at 02:27

    My device stopped booting during a when i insert a USB-Serial adapter.No blinking of LED when power up.Is it bricked or damaged?

    ReplyDelete
  33. gat3 July 2017 at 06:25


    BoC Router> mtd_write write /mnt/uboot_usb_256_03.img Bootloader
    mtd_write: not found

    help me

    ReplyDelete
  34. Albert25 July 2017 at 13:43

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  35. Albert25 July 2017 at 13:58

    I think the mtd-utils are absend. Can someone provide the mdt_write bin with needed libs?

    ReplyDelete
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