New version US TP-Link Archer C7 V2 SUCCESS

[outdoor]

Hello, I spend a couple hours this morning getting my new router flashed so I thought I would at lease capture the process for the community as it's not currently completely straight forward...

First the background. I purchased the router because a cursory glance of the OpenWRT compatibility list showed both 1.2 and 2.0 as supported, so I thought it a safe bet. Deeper research before attempting to flash uncovered two issues disallowing an easy transition to Gargoyle.

• Starting December of last year, the v2.0 hardware changed(a new flash chip was used) with no version bump...so if the serial is 215C or later, old builds brick the router(possibly soft brick, but regardless, it no longer works). Support for the new version was added in 1.9.1, so use that version and all is well.
• The router also came with a US specific new firmware 3.14.3 Build 151014. It apparently preemptively implements proposed FCC safeguards against installing 3rd party software. So, simply trying to flash from the stock UI threw an error back.

So, much googling of OpenWRT and DD-WRT forums led to multiple workaround options that I unsuccessfully tried. It was found scripts could be run by entering them in the SSID field, and I attempted a couple different methods of doing that to run a script that would supposedly allow flashing of the 3rd party firmware, but neither worked for me. Others said that TFTP worked, so I settled on that method.

• Downloaded Gargoyle 1.9.1
• Downloaded OpenWRT build from http://luci.subsignal.org/~trondah/arch ... actory.bin
• Rename OpenWRT build to ArcherC7v2_tp_recovery.bin
• Downloaded TFTP 32 bit from http://tftpd32.jounin.net/tftpd32_download.html
• Followed directions for TFTP de-brick Alternative section at https://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wdr7500

Now, for the final details. I flashed the above OpenWRT build first because it was mentioned as a working version in a forum post. You might be able to directly flash Gargoyle 1.9.1... I'm not entirely certain if the OpenWRT build has something different in the headers that allow it to flash versus the latest Gargoyle or not. I know what I did worked, so that's what I'm outlining.

The flashed succeeded and the OpenWRT build linked has UI, so I was able to login and flash the latest gargoyle from there. Couple minutes later I was presented with my familiar purple admin page...

So far, everything looks good. 2.4 and 5Ghz wifi are functioning as expected.

I've loaded the Open WRT Luci lua i believe, now i'm trying to login and it does not accept root, blank(password) or any combination of admin, admin. admin, password. root, password etc.....

[Lantis]

root with blank password.