Am-3200 Firmware

[In Libman]

Ihave updated my firmware in ReadyNAS 3200 Rack mount from 4.x to 6.9.5. I no longer can login management console. Admin/Password does not work. I tried booting recovery usb but the NAS will not recognize. I am getting "gpio_it87: no device" "readynas_led_probe: no compatible platform" when I try to boot anything from boot manager. I can see the device on Raidar when it scans. Any suggestions here?

I find it interesting that the NAS name is not the default. That makes me think that you still have your OS4.2.x drives installed and have not done a factory default. That won't work. Of course, you do lose all the data on them, which you should have realized before you started the OS6 update.

I don't think a USB recovery is your solution. But one thing to note is that you still will need to use the OS4.2.x recovery method, just with a modified OS6 image file (like you used to update to OS6 in the first place) in place of the 4.2.x one.

I have a monitor and keyboard attached. When the NAS boots it always stops at no device detected and no compatible platform message. I opened the NAS and got the flash drive connected to the motherboard. I am going to try and re-image the flash drive for Version 6.9.5. I think the flash drives I have been using are too new. (16gb). I am trying to get 6.9.5 to flash. I will try and load the r4tor6_6.9.5.bin on the flash drive.(what I used to update)

No, you can't load the update files directly to the internal USB. I hope you make an image before you try or you see this and don't try, or you could make your situation far worse. Those messages are normal, and then it should continue on. You should see it identify the motherboard and BIOS version (verifying it's a genuine Netgear system, not generic SuperMicro), a long pause, then finally a login prompt. I wish it gave more status during the boot like the virtual machine version does.

When you remove the internal USB, get a listing of the files on it and post here. And make an image just in case anything you try does make it worse. Maybe you are missing something or have a mismatch of files and I can help identify them.

Unfortunately, you can't log in via the console until you turn on SSH access. It sounds like you are very close. Did you do a full factory default after loading 6.x? Maybe you should try it again. Or use another tool to zero the drive(s) if you can't get to the boot menu.

If that doesn't work, this is what I would do: Make both an image and file copies of the content of the internal flash. Do the same with the flash from your successfully converted 3200. Then image the flash from the non-working one with the working one. See if that fixes it. Win32DiskImager or Passmark ImageUSB are good imaging tools for this.

I expect that will boot the system, at least if you have blank drive(s) installed. At that point, though, you will likely see that both units have the same serial number. Putting the orignal VPD file for that unit back on the flash should fix that. Some ReadyNAS get the serial number and model info from VPD and others from the motherboard DMI data. If your NAS has the right serial number without replacing VPD, you needn't bother. My 4200V2s need the VPD and my RD5200 does not. I have a 3200 motherboard, but it's not in a system.

That's what it should have All should have recent dates except LDLINUX.SYS and VPD.. Did you try another factory default (if you can even get to the boot menu), or to boot it with just one blank drive, and see what happens? It looks like your flash is right, but it's not installing correctly to the drive(s). But you can try replacing all but VPD from the working one, just in case. If you do that from Windows and it adds a "System Volume Information" file, it won't hurt anything.

Good advice there Tim. Not having gone through the process too often, maybe you could help. It doesn't seem as if much has been added to any of the 22.03.4 release directories since 10th April for the device. From experience, should we expect more changes before the official announcement?

The main issue now is that not all of the packages have been built so if you try to install things or to build a custom image it will probably fail. Once everything is built the announcement will go out.

If permitted by the regulatory requirements, and thinking only in terms of the hardware, what are the maximum safe to set transmit powers across the various channels on this device? I'm thinking in terms of hardware limitations. Is it possible to set a power that will damage the device (e.g. for those who live in Panama) or is the maximum power that can be set always a power that is safe to set?

I am confident RT3200 OpenWrt firmware that permits transmitting at the power levels allowed in the U.S. will not "break" my RT3200 and am more than willing to try. I don't think that Belkin would have designed the RT3200/EA8450 to use less than full power.

Using full power may have required placing external RF amplifiers, which means additional cost. Appart from that note that restrictions can also be related to RF noise emitted on neighboring or harmonic bands which would be too high otherwise. Hence we'd have to proof that the stock firmware really behaves differently and permits higher TX power levels despite calibration data stating otherwise (it's not that we would have never seen vendors patching the driver instead of just writing correct calibration data to EEPROM...)

Interesting. I went down the rabbit hole a little to understand how the antenna amplification affects your maximum transmission power. Sorry, it's a bit of a random ramble, but I thought I'd share my finding. Apparently the FCC has this to say:

I'm going to assume that the antennas inside the RT3200 have a gain of no more than 7dBi? Meaning you would indeed be permitted to ramp it up to 29dBm in the US.

Edit: Actually! There's a Linksys document that states the antenna gain is below 6dBi.

I remember back in the old old days that it was hard to find a NIC that would transmit at more than 100mW, the exception at the time being some InterSil cards that would go up to 200mW. I take it a lot of lower-end wifi hardware is still spec'd to such limits for cost reasons and because it's more than adequate for many home set-ups. Not to mention limiting the interference in densely populated areas where more isn't always better.

Fortunately, I don't have to contend with significant interference on 5 GHz due to its lower range (than 2.4 GHz). There is no competition within 20+ dBm of our AP's on any 5 GHz channels, despite our home being in a Wi-Fi dense environment. I could see that being a problem in an apartment complex though. Everyone seems to scatter mesh routers about these days, even though our neighborhood builder thoughtfully left wired Ethernet back haul behind that needs only termination on a patch panel in the telecom cabinet-a bridge too far for most. 2.4 GHz is another matter. Mesh and ISP provided hardware throughout our neighborhood completely ignores not using 40 MHz wide channels on occupied 2.4 GHz space, and it's all turned up loud.

I'm not sure if I'm the only one running into this, but after upgrading to OpenWrt 22.03.4 I'm getting a kernel panic every couple minutes/hours (maybe 4 or 5 times in the last half a day), but the stack trace doesn't make any sense:

It's interesting that in 5Ghz, the maximum allowed power in OpenWrt is always seems to be 1/2 of the certified power. Last time I saw this is due to external amplifier. But since we all know there is no external amplifier in RT3200, it's kinda weird.

Genuinely curious about this... do you find power consumption to be costly with this device? Or are you seeking opportunities to lower power consumption just for the sake of it? Just curious as to the motivation behind the ask.

This is a belkin rt3200 device. I have searched this thread and the internet but could not find anyone having this problem. I don't have a serial port so I don't have much diagnostic information. Decided to post here to see if anyone had this problem before connecting a serial port.

Does not matter if I ssh into the device and type "reboot" or use the web interface to "reboot" the device, then result is the same the power light goes off and the device is off. I have to turn the switch off and on to turn the device on. I have another belkin rt3200 and it works fine with the "reboot" command. Now for the crazy part when I type "poweroff" it works like a reboot on both devices. So the work around is to use "poweroff" for the device that won't reboot with the "reboot" command.

I removed this device as the router and made it a dumb access point. So not a big deal if does not reboot. Otherwise the device works fine. This is only a problem with upgrades. After a firmware upgrade I have to power cycle the device with the switch.

I am using ondemand governor however changing governors are quite sensitive and might lead to weird behaviour so i tend not to change them if i dont have to. I was more referring to some neat tricks like disabling lan and usb ports etc.

I definitely understand the concern. However, the issue with the governors in the past, AFAIK, was around the CPU speed being set too low during boot, and the resulting undervoltage due to that would cause the boot process to hang. You can still mitigate the potential for this issue by setting the scaling_min_freq, if you choose to pursue that route.

I will say, when I have seen WED working properly, it is quite impressive the positive effect it has on CPU load in the TX direction (from the AP). So once it is working more smoothly and consistently, I would definitely keep it on your list of efficiency tweaks.

Speaking of, do you expect to see WED enabled by default/GUI toggle in the next major OpenWrt release for RT3200 devices? I have tried it however for low demand users it can be a challenge to test (my whole household is low demand network wise) so i cannot be sure how effective it will be in the future with this option enabled. This router is too powerful for me and I struggle to saturate the connection easily to properly test it. Brief saturation, while downloading single large files from static remote locations (eg. DVD iso images from FTP servers), is possible however in 2023. most of consumer services are fairly optimized so saturation is not easily achievable for me. We do use download mostly in my household so it will help in the future however i have no clue how much.

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