[PLUG] Next meeting topic?

Ted Mittelstaedt tedm at portlandia-it.com
Tue Oct 15 00:53:45 UTC 2024


> If you only have one, I'd just get a different device

Which is why I haven't done anything with it so far.  Getting the boot console and flash layout is the easy part but I'm not going to buy a NAND programmer.  Right now it's running factory stock firmware so it should be no problem to get the radio calibration data.  Although my understanding is that the MT chips don't use an ART partition so I'm not sure how to do this.

>Re Broadcom wifi, OpenWrt mostly decided the devices are too painful to be worth the effort.

This is why FreshTomato and dd-wrt exist, Russell.  FreshTomato isn't particularly painful to build and the port really didn't look that difficult.   Dd-wrt is more involved - however, throughput on a Broadcom Northstar device with hardware NAT is around 3 times faster than OpenWRT on an equivalent CPU device due to the hardware NAT driver being used by dd-wrt.

OpenWRT didn't decide not to build on Broadcom because it was too painful.  They decided due to "religious" reasons - because the Broadcom drivers for their SoC hardware are not open source.  Fortunately, Atheros/Qualcomm decided to continue making wifi chips and release programming details, and go head-to-head against Broadcom so there ARE inexpensive consumer routers with those chips available.  But if they hadn't, then OpenWRT would not exist.

It does allow OpenWRT to use the 6.6 kernel, of course.  Which has other benefits that the older kernels lack.

All 3 projects have their strengths but they are all the fleas on the dog's back - because they all depend on a steady stream of inexpensive  devices.  And if MediaTek or Qualcomm were ever to exit that market and Broadcom was left....argh.

Ted




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