WARNING: new WL-330N3G devices cannot become a Meteobridge

[admin]

Deep diving on a situation where a Meteobridge user wants to flash an ASUS WL-330N3G and did not had success on that turned out that there is a new batch of these devices in the market that CANNOT BE FLASHED WITH METEOBRIDGE FIRMWARE.

You can't see that from the outside, as ASUS did not change any serial number etc. Inspecting the PCBs there is also no difference. Only, when you solder a serial console to the PCB, you can see that the new version does have a different bootloader installed. This boot loader blocks installing the Meteobridge image when being in recovery mode. I don't know if ASUS did this by accident and also their own software cannot be loaded from recovery mode, but as a matter of fact pushing Meteobridge or any other OpenWRT based firmware to it does not work anymore.

Therefore, I recommend not to buy ASUS WL-330N3G, as you might run into these problems without a chance to solve it. At the moment I am not very optimistic that I can solve the issue. So WL-330N3G is out of the game for now. Sorry!

[admin]

This is what ASUS did replied to my mail pointing to the problem regarding their latest batch of WL-330N3G devices...

Dear Mister Pasternak,

thank you for your request to our support.

So before you opened the device and connected a serial console, did you experience any problems with the device? Was it already defective at that point, or did you have any problem with it?

Anything regarding the PCB and what is written in the forum goes way beyond my support and knowledge of the device.



With kind regards, / Mit freundlichen Grüßen,

Technical Support Division ASUS Germany
i.A. Marco Janssen

ASUS Computer GmbH
Harkortstrasse. 21-23
D-40880 Ratingen
Germany

Tel.:+49 2102 578 95 55 (Montag bis Freitag von 9 - 18 Uhr)
FAX: +49 2102 9599 11
RMA Anfragen:
http://rma.asus.de

Geschäftsführer: Eric Chen
Amtsgericht: Düsseldorf HRB 43472
UID-Nr: DE121629751


---------- Original Message ----------
From : info@smartbedded.com
Sent : 1/31/2015 1:04:55 PM
To : "techsupport@asus.com"
Subject : <TSD> Wireless WL-330N3G

[CASEID=WTM20150131210455047]

Apply date : 2015/01/31 13:04:55(UTC Time)


[Kontaktinformationen]
Name : Boris Pasternak
Email : info@smartbedded.com
Land : Germany[Deutschland]

[Produktinformationen]
Produkt : Wireless
Model : WL-330N3G
Seriennummer : EBIM04000xxx
Ort des Kaufs : Deutschland
Datum des Kaufs : 2015/01/20
Betriebssystem : Others

[Problembeschreibung]
Recovery mode of WL-330N3G to flash a new firmware to the device is no longer
operational. Previous releases of this device did support this. I did a drill down
connecting a serial console to the PCB and the boot loader returns a false error
message: "Abort: image size larger than 1769472!"

You find more analysis details on the problem here:
https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php ... 17#p263617

As compile date of uboot has changed, I guess an error was accidentially
incorporated on these most recent builds.

Regards,
Boris

[cristakey]

Deep diving on a situation where a Meteobridge user wants to flash an ASUS WL-330N3G and did not had success on that turned out that there is a new batch of these devices in the market that CANNOT BE FLASHED WITH METEOBRIDGE FIRMWARE.

You can't see that from the outside, as ASUS did not change any serial number etc. Inspecting the PCBs there is also no difference. Only, when you solder a serial console to the PCB, you can see that the new version does have a different bootloader installed. This boot loader blocks installing the Meteobridge image when being in recovery mode. I don't know if ASUS did this by accident and also their own software cannot be loaded from recovery mode, but as a matter of fact pushing Meteobridge or any other OpenWRT based firmware to it does not work anymore.

Therefore, I recommend not to buy ASUS WL-330N3G, as you might run into these problems without a chance to solve it. At the moment I am not very optimistic that I can solve the issue. So WL-330N3G is out of the game for now. Sorry!

Hi Admin!
I'm going to buy this product within next weeks and I have one questions. How can I know if the Asus WL-330N3G has the new or the old firmware? What does "you can tell from the outside" mean? Sorry, but I'm not English so I've not understood much.

Thanks

[admin]

You cannot say from the outside. That is the bad news.
I recommend to take one of the other devices.

[cristakey]

Thanks