Thank you all ! I have successfully freed "my" router to an AC68U. Overall smooth... just a couple issues I had and I want to write about them to help future doers:
- Do NOT use the Asus Restore utility from Asus' website as it does not work with this process. It looks like it is a latest version that "blocks" the restoration of older firmwares. The version that is provided in the links of this forum, works for the final restoration (not the downgrade to .1703 TMO firmware).
- If you downgrading your FW from the latest TMO down to .1703 TMO firmware which includes Telnet support, the Asus Firmware Restoration utility will not work (at least for me it didn't). Use the router's IP address, hard-code the same range of IP (+1) on your adapter settings and use the Asus mini CFE webserver browser utility, which is basically an in-router FW restoration. You can use the Asus Firmware Restoration utility at the last step, when you are ready to install the FW of your choice. The utility does work then.
- Pay extra attention during the HEX editing. Engineer has a couple commands in his tutorial that compares the MAC addresses and the WPS code. If they are different, stop and revisit.
-
@Engineer: I would add this to your awesome write-up, pulled from
here:
CHECK YOUR ROUTER FLASH CHIP:
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After a reboot:
dmesg | grep -e "flash" -e "nand" -e "amd" /tmp/syslog.log
Possible brands are: Spansion aka AMD, Numonyx, Micron, Toshiba, Hynix, Samsung, Esmt, Mxic, Zentel, Winbond.
Flash Chip (NAND): SPANSION(AMD) / ESMT
1.0.1.1 (US)
1.0.1.6 (US) **
1.0.1.6 (EU) *
1.0.1.7 (EU) **
1.0.1.8 (EU) **
1.0.2.0 (EU) **
1.0.2.0 (US) **
1.0.2.0 (US) ASUS => Compiled from ASUS *increase rootfs/mtd3 to 64MB*
1.0.2.0 (US) ESMT => Compiled from ASUS for AC68U with
ESMT NAND *increase rootfs/mtd3 to 64MB*
*DO NOT USE THIS CFE ON SPANSION(AMD) NAND*
1.0.2.1 (US) => DDR3 *unlocked* to 800MHZ
* DDR3 locked to 666MHZ
** DDR3 unlocked to 800MHZ
You recommend to use either 1.0.2.0 or 1.0.2.1. Most users would go for the latest, but according to the above, it will cause issues. I am not sure what kind of issues; I am guessing it will overclock the DDR3 memory and it is not stable on AMD chips...?? In any case, I checked before I select the CFE version and I was running AMD. So, I went with 1.0.2.0.
(Will OEM Asus new firmware releases update the CFE?)
- I had some issues making my AC1900 accepting the old stock Asus firmware 376.3626 (that enables the partition expansion). I did install the 1.0.2.0 bootloader first successfully, but during the 376.3626 restoration, it would fail around 50%. Even if I cleared the NVRAM, it would not accept it. It seems to be some incompatibility having the 1.0.2.0 bootloader with a TMO firmware (I had downgraded to .1703). To overcome the issue, I installed Tomato 1.24 VPN (not the AIO) which is very small, about 10MB. That seemed to do the trick. From here you have two options: Upgrade to the firmware of your liking thru Tomato or use the Asus Firmware Restoration utility, which is what I did. This time, it took the OEM Asus firmware 376.3626 without issues. Then, cleared NVRAM again and thru the Asus interface, I upgraded to the latest version 378.8258 .
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Didn't have the chance to do any extensive testing, but so far everything seem to work fine. My Asus PCE-AC68 adapter shows 1300Mbps, although I think it is BS, since the Windows 10 drivers still suck, as they are a carry over from Win8. Hopefully Asus will update them soon.
That's all. Be patient and watch
this Youtube video to get a taste of the work that you will have to do. It will give you vertigo, but it is worth it.