Tmobile/AC-RT68U

[prince7272]

Hi
I have a tmobile version of the AC-RT68U router and I flashed CFE and I converted it to a normal
RT68U.
I installed DD-WRT, Tomato and everything is ok.
Now I want to install Merlin but I can not flash it neither from within tomato, dd-wrt
or fom the CFE mini browser or asus restoration.
If I flash merlin from withing tomato/dd-wrt it seems the flashing is ok tomato/dd-wrt indicates
that the upgrade was successful but when the router reboots I still see the same version i.e tomato or dd-wrt
(it depends which version I used to flash merlin).
Now if I flash from the asus restoration utility again the process finishes and when the router reboots
instead of seeing merlin I see again tomato.
It seems the flashing is fake. It does not actually write to flash
Have you seen this problem before?
How do I actually flash merlin or even stock?

 

[joegreat]

How do I actually flash merlin or even stock?

Strange, but it could have to do with NVRAM: You could run nvram erase && reboot from Telnet and putting the router immediately into recovery mode.

Then the Asus Recovery Tool should be happy to install the latest Merlin firmware version...

 

[cybrnook]

Merlins quote from Shibby's thread:

"The RT-AC68U requires the existing firmware to be aware of firmware images using a 64 MB partition size - something Tomato probably isn't. You need 378.55 first, from there you can flash any of the newer releases."

 

[prince7272]

Maybe this is the case.
Also I found out that all CFE flashes are 227KB while the one from the tmobile router is 512KB.
When I took a backup of my original CFE the backup was 512KB.
I do have an original RT-AC68U and I took a backup of the CFE and as a surprised the backup was 512KB.
I compared the backups (512KB with the 227KB from internet) and I do see ARM code.
I flashed my tmobile CFE with my old RT-AC68U CFE (both 512KB) and since that time
the router behaved way better. I did not have problem to put the router in rescue mode.
After that I flashed the router with an asus old firmware version (the oldest I found on Asus's website) and then I upgraded the router to the latest.
After that I was able to flash tomato, dd-wrt, merlin, stock firmware without any problem
Thanks for your suggestions.

Merlins quote from Shibby's thread:

"The RT-AC68U requires the existing firmware to be aware of firmware images using a 64 MB partition size - something Tomato probably isn't. You need 378.55 first, from there you can flash any of the newer releases."

 

[joegreat]

I finally flashed Merlin and my Tmobile router is fine and fully converted to an RT-AC68U
I did twice NVRAM clean through the WPS button and I executed the nvram erase command and everything is fine.
Now I have to report something interesting with this release of firmware ( RT-AC68U_380.65_2.trx)
I enabled QoS and traffic managers and I do see that the CTF and FA are enabled. At least this is reported
I tried to see the traffic and I dont see anything. I see few Kbytes traffic and I am sure I am downloading 3-4Mbits because of the IPTV that I have
It seems the traffic does not go through the traffic monitors is it is undetected
I do see the ctf module is loaded with lsmod and the nvram show, shows the following
ctf_fa_mode=2
ctf_disable=0
ctf_disable_force=0
ctf_fa_cap=1
ctf_pt_udp=0

I think "somehow" the ctf and FA is enabled to this tmobile router and I do see it on the traffic monitors

Yes, this is normal: when Hardware Acceleration (CTF, FA, etc.) is enabled the network traffic bypasses the CPU and do not land on the Traffic Manager statistics.