Reply To: Converting DSL-AC68U to RT-AC68U for use as AiMesh Node – Solved I’m sure there were a series of posts on the old forum about hacking a DSL-AC68U to make it into an RT-AC68U. Sadly those posts are lost and not cached…

[booji]

Six wrote:

Which is exactly what I would expect to happen, with the recovery completely wiping everything back to factory settings with the latest firmware. So Mr Booji what are you doing that is different?

I wish I knew, you would think the recovery would wipe all the settings

Hi Guys,

Sorry about the delay in reply, while i’m trying stuff out on this damned router I have no internet. At the moment I’ve got the internet by connecting to my old HG616 moden via Lan port 1 so each time I experiment I have to undo everything then redo everything after.

I did try and turn my DSL-AC68U to RT-AC68U last night using the latest asus stock RT firmware and it worked. doing the telnet commands set to to the right web interface.I couldn’t get it working with my bt HG612 modem though but it more the fact that I wasn’t sure how to do it since it seemed to differ slightly from the DSL-AC68U version.

So I reverted back to the DSL-AC68U by putting into recovery mode, flashed back to DSL-AC68U firmware and factory reset.

Unlike your attempt you mentioned earlier even though it went back to the DSL-AC68U it still displayed it as a RT-AC68U in the top right hand corner and also on device ID (and still no DSL drivers loaded).

I managed to get it back to the right settings by telnet with the complete opposite commands.

nvram set odmpid=”DSL-AC68U”

nvram set asuscfeodmpid=”DSL-AC68U”

nvram set asuscfecommit=1

nvram commit

This got me back to my original DSL broken router again. At 2.30am I gave up.

I got read your other posts today (at work) and tried with the old 21126-fix01 firmware you gave a link to ealier. This is exactly what I did.

1/ Reset the router NVram (WPS button/Power on)

2/ Boot into recovery (Reset/power on until LED blinks slowly)

3/ Load firmware over Ethernet using Asus recovery tool. (unit reboots after recovery)

4/ Reset the router NVram (WPS button/Power on)

4/ Plug in DSL connection and reboot. The router fires up in setup mode. do the minimum of setting username and leave wireless open (just enough to get into the router GUI).

5/ Load 21126-fix01 firmware over Web GUI and reboot

6/ repeat set 5 (as asus recommend doing this twice)

Waited with bated breath on reboot and…….no DSL no DSL driver loaded! Aaaarrrgh.

So even using the tried and tested 21126-fix01 hasnt worked either.

I have now reconfigured with the HG616 moden just to send this message. One thing I have though about and that not ALL parts of the NV are cleared during the reset. After all when you coverted your DSL-AC68U to RT-AC68U even though you did a factory restore some elements of the NVram still remained since , even after updating firmware, you had to telnet to change the ID.  Now maybe I could have had a partly corrupted bad flash that knock out something in the NV ram and this still survives a WPS button/Power on NV ram clear. This might explain why not all is cleared.

So I thought I would do a NVRam text dump with a router with minimal settings (ie just user admin/admin123, wireless open and telenet enabled). If I could compare this with another DSL-AC68U nv ram dump I may be able to spot any differences. What do you think?

Another odd thing I noticed last light was if you manually set the VDSL link there is no username/password box on the GUI but there is for ADSL. I have no idea why this is. I had previously restored an old (pre router fail) config file to set the DSL setting up and this has the username/password box after the config is loaded. Look at the router info on a clean reconfigured router and it’s not there.

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