OpenWrt 21.02 – TP-LINK TD-W8970v1 16M mod

Posted on by Johnn

OpenWrt is an alternative software for routers. In 2021 the OpenWrt team released the 21.02 version. In this short article you will find some useful information how to build the OpenWrt image for TP-LINK TD-W8970v1 router with modified SPI flash.

Short introduction

The building process is the same as in my previous article about modifying TP-LINK TD-W8970v1 which is located here. Due to changes in the new OpenWrt software you need the new patch for the source code to allow building OpenWrt for TD-W8970v1 with 16M flash mod.

The patch was tested with OpenWrt 21.02.1.

Building

  1. Clone the OpenWrt repository to your local destination 
    git clone https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt.git

    or update your local copy of the OpenWrt repository with

    git fetch
  2. Enter the cloned OpenWrt directory and switch to desired branch, e.g. 
    git checkout v21.02.1
  3. Apply the patch. 
    git apply /path/to/21.02.patch
  4. Prepare the sources for building 
    ./scripts/feeds update -a
./scripts/feeds install -a
  5. Generate config for building 
    make menuconfig

    Select lantiq as target system and TP-LINK TD-W8970-16M as target profile.

  6. Run make to build the firmware.

Summary

In the steps above you can build the OpenWrt image for TP-LINK TD-W8970v1 with flash mod. Do not install the OpenWrt image for TD-W8970v1-16M into original TD-W8970v1!

 

Update 13.03.2022: the patches and the latest prepared OpenWrt firmware for TD-W8970v1-16M is available here