TP-Link TL-WR841N/ND V7

Report problems and success stories with Gargoyle on various hardware platforms.

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Richard Adams
Posts: 9
Joined: Thu Jun 14, 2012 8:49 pm

Re: TP-Link TL-WR841N/ND V7

Post by Richard Adams »

Answering my own question:

I decided not to try this for the WR741ND version 4.3 with the following thinking.

The 841 version 5 and version 7 hardware have similar chip numbers as per the link below, while the chip numbers for the 741 are a different series between the version 1.x and version 4.x.

Below is a link to a listing which shows chip types used in the various TP-Link router products.
http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/start#tp-link

Because of the above, there was a greater chance that gargoyle would run on the version 7 841, and those who tried it were right, while it was already written the backfire wasn't working on the 741 version 4.3.

At this point I could have bought a version 7 of the WR841ND and tried to upgrade it per this procedure, but instead chose to buy a 741 from gargoyle-router store. Hopefully it will arrive working, soon.

Mikam892
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu Dec 08, 2011 5:45 am

Re: TP-Link TL-WR841N/ND V7

Post by Mikam892 »

Hi,

I managed to brick one of my WR841N V7.2 when upgrading from Openwrt to Gargoyle. In order to get it un-bricked I have ordered a CP2102 TTL converter (saw the proposal in one other discussion in this forum) but now I have the problem that I can see only garbage via putty when setting it to 115200 8N1. So it seems there is still some life in the WR841 but now I would need to get the serial output in readable format.

Do you have some good hints what I could try next?

LHoust
Posts: 18
Joined: Fri May 27, 2011 1:22 pm
Location: Canada

Re: TP-Link TL-WR841N/ND V7

Post by LHoust »

Nilist wrote:OK, took the plunge and bought a TL-WR841N v7.2
As described by others, could not install the Gargoyle 1.4.5 v5 firmware through the TP-Link web interface (wrong HW version), so did the following:

1. Downloaded the latest OpenWRT build for v7 from here:
http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wr841nd
2. Downloaded the Gargoyle v5 factory image
3. Installed the OpenWRT firmware through the TP-Link Web UI
4. The OpenWRT came without LuCI web interface, so used PuTTY to telnet to router to set password
5. Used WinSCP to upload Gargoyle v5 factory image firmware to /tmp and rename to fw.bin
6. Opened a terminal window in WinSCP and executed

Code: Select all

mtd -r write /tmp/fw.bin firmware
NOTE: For the WinSCP Transfer select the SCP Mode since the SFTP Mode will Fail...

Although I was able to load the v5 Firmware (1.4.7) on the v7.2 Unit, the 40 Mhz Dual Channel Mode was NOT working (as reported by inSSIDer: a Single Channel with 144 Mhz Bandwidth).

Returning to Original Firmware inSSIDer now displays the Dual Channel Mode and 300 Mhz Bandwidth, which suggests until Backfire (OpenWRT 10.03.1) includes the v7 Support, Gargoyle's 802.11n Support will "Limited"

Wild Rat
Posts: 40
Joined: Fri Feb 17, 2012 9:43 pm

Re: TP-Link TL-WR841N/ND V7

Post by Wild Rat »

LHoust wrote:...
which suggests until Backfire (OpenWRT 10.03.1) includes the v7 Support, Gargoyle's 802.11n Support will "Limited"
it supports full 300, just read:

http://www.gargoyle-router.com/phpbb/vi ... =13&t=2407

vectorsigma
Posts: 7
Joined: Thu May 24, 2012 11:00 pm

Re: TP-Link TL-WR841N/ND V7

Post by vectorsigma »

Mikam892 wrote:Hi,

I managed to brick one of my WR841N V7.2 when upgrading from Openwrt to Gargoyle. In order to get it un-bricked I have ordered a CP2102 TTL converter (saw the proposal in one other discussion in this forum) but now I have the problem that I can see only garbage via putty when setting it to 115200 8N1. So it seems there is still some life in the WR841 but now I would need to get the serial output in readable format.

Do you have some good hints what I could try next?
Hi Mikam, same problem, too. I solved using this guide

https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=33906.

If you pay attention, you-ll see that the "garbage" messages are not "casual", but there is a logic. So, you-ll able to write the commands to reload a functional firmware. Good luck!

ale

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