Apple Time Capsule Support?

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stuartbh
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Joined: Sun Oct 20, 2019 4:18 pm

Apple Time Capsule Support?

Post by stuartbh »

Developers and maintainers,

I own an Apple Time Capsule (A model "A1409" specifically, currently it needs its power supply fixed), but it brought me to realize that these devices have plummeted in price since I bought mine (from $300 to like $40).

However, whence I called Apple to find out if I could order a replacement power supply board from them I found out that hardware support ended and software updates for the device will end soon (next year I think). With that in mind, it made me wonder, has anyone looked at if Gargoyle could run on one of these devices? The nice thing about them is that they came with built in 2TB or 3TB storage in them (mine is the 2TB version, though I do plan to upgrade it whence I have it opened up to fix the power supply). They also have an USB port for plugging external storage as well.

I do plan to place a similar posting into the OpenWRT forum as well about Apple Time Capsules as I saw it was not on the OpenWRT supported hardware list at all.
Very Respectfully,

Stuart, N3GWG
Computer Scientist

Lantis
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Joined: Mon Jan 05, 2015 5:33 am
Location: Australia

Re: Apple Time Capsule Support?

Post by Lantis »

If it's not supported by OpenWrt, it won't be supported here.
I also very much doubt that Apple will not have gone yo every effort possible to make sure that loading a custom OS is impossible.

Further, given apples track record, it is likely running broadcom based wireless chipsets and would therefore be useless anyway.

If it gains usable OpenWrt support, let me know and I'll look at it.
http://lantisproject.com/downloads/gargoyle_ispyisail.php for the latest releases
Please be respectful when posting. I do this in my free time on a volunteer basis.

stuartbh
Posts: 76
Joined: Sun Oct 20, 2019 4:18 pm

Re: Apple Time Capsule Support?

Post by stuartbh »

Lantis wrote:If it's not supported by OpenWrt, it won't be supported here.
I also very much doubt that Apple will not have gone yo every effort possible to make sure that loading a custom OS is impossible.

Further, given apples track record, it is likely running broadcom based wireless chipsets and would therefore be useless anyway.

If it gains usable OpenWrt support, let me know and I'll look at it.
Yes, in fact, it is surely reasonable to assert that support within Gargoyle would be predicated upon the initial adoption of support by OpenWRT, thus, I shall post in their forums about this.

With respect to the chipset used, only in later models (which I admit, I do own) were broadcom chips used.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirPort_Time_Capsule

Why do you suggest that Broadcom wireless chipsets are useless when both OpenWRT and as well Gargoyle support this chipset?
Very Respectfully,

Stuart, N3GWG
Computer Scientist

Lantis
Moderator
Posts: 6735
Joined: Mon Jan 05, 2015 5:33 am
Location: Australia

Re: Apple Time Capsule Support?

Post by Lantis »

https://openwrt.org/meta/infobox/broadcom_wifi

That's basically the summary of facts today.

Broadcom support has been historically poor (due to Broadcom's lack of desire to support open source), and therefore it gets almost zero attention.

If you spend a few minutes reading about broadcom chipsets on the OpenWrt forum, you will see the same sentiments.


As for Gargoyle's support of it. It's absolutely bare bones at best. It only does 2.4GHz, it doesn't do guest networking, it doesn't do 802.11n, it barely runs, we don't actually build specific devices (we only build generic firmware that people can try). It has so many special cases, buggy code paths and different ways of doing things that any time it is referenced in the code it usually means we need to do something spectacularly different, adding to code density and making it more complicated.
http://lantisproject.com/downloads/gargoyle_ispyisail.php for the latest releases
Please be respectful when posting. I do this in my free time on a volunteer basis.

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