16MB Xor + 128 NAND or 32MB Xor for future use?

ccchan · 2020-08-27T07:00:19.752Z

Hi

I am considering GL inet devices, which comes DEFAULT with openwrt.

B1300: (ram is 256MB)
Xor: 32MB

AR-750S: (ram is 128MB)
Xor 16MB + 128MB Nand

A1300 (not yet until dec, 2020), ram is 256MB
Xor “4” MB + 128MB Nand

They also differ in 867Mbps wifi vs 433, USB3 vs 2.0 which I don’t care much.

I 1st pririoty is use openwrt for AS LONG AS POSSIBLE.

so should I buy one with larger Xor (B1300, 32MB),
or one with smaller Xor (750S, 16MB; A1300, 4MB) but with 128MB+ nand?

thank you.

alzhao · 2020-08-27T09:22:39.181Z

Try device with 128MB Nand.

Johnex · 2020-08-27T12:49:45.102Z

I would say wait for the Velica:

gl-inet.com – 8 Jan 19

GL-B2200 / Velica

The best tri-band WiFi mesh router. Give your home a high-speed, stable and wide-spread IoT gateway for all your smart home devices.

The newest products will as always have the longest support, probably more than 3 years as it has been with other GL products.

ccchan · 2020-08-27T14:37:13.014Z

this must be expensive.

i dont have that much spare money on it sor.

anyway thx for comment.

ccchan · 2020-08-27T14:37:53.391Z

btw shd be NOR, not xor

ccchan · 2020-08-27T17:48:08.662Z

ok thx.

seems those with nand are newer, but the support is COMING (not very solid i think).

but having 128MB storage for package install is way too good.

for 750S, even nand dont work, 16MB NOR + 128MB ram is a standard good thing.

if that 128MB nand works (works in stock, not sure later). it’s a bonus

1user · 2020-08-29T11:22:23.540Z

ccchan:

for 750S, even nand dont work, 16MB NOR + 128MB ram is a standard good thing.

I’m a bit confused here, does that mean the 128MB Nand Flash in AR750S cannot be used for storage/adding package for OpenWRT, etc?

Can anyone confirm this? Thanks.

ccchan · 2020-08-29T14:26:47.626Z

I got reply from support.
they say the stock firmware of slate will let you have 90MB+ free space for storage.
so that’s usable.

HOWEVER,
self compile of openwrt by default now is only NOR, unless you do something tricky.

So for me, who will stick with stock firmware, slate 's nand is OK for me.

ps: just google and u will find documents that nand support is newer.

Nick_T · 2020-08-29T14:39:31.505Z

If so, Can I assume the slate will have a long product support from GL-inet since the NAND support is newer and looks like they’ve not fully utilized it yet?

Thank you.

Johnex · 2020-08-29T21:31:00.903Z

The Slate is already like 2 years old if i remember correctly, so no.
From GL usually routers are getting around 3 years support, but their life is extended using Vanilla OpenWRT.

What ccchan is talking about is that Vanilla OpenWRT has not had NAND support, while the GL firmware has, so compiling your own OpenWRT firmware, without using the GL Imagebuilder, would result in a NOR firmware only.

ccchan · 2020-08-30T18:41:05.209Z

wait…

i read in another thread that NAND driver likely NOT be included to “openwrt” as they contain
close source drivers.

does it mean that, after 1 yr when slate is 3yrs old, when GL inet drop it,
the vanilla firmware from openwrt may not support NAND?
and need to wait 3rd party to make the modification?

thx

Johnex · 2020-08-30T18:46:34.986Z

All the modifications are already done, its just the OpenWRT team that maybe has decided not to include it. They temporarily dropped support for the AR750s already, but users have been pushing fixes for it to be included again. You can read about it here, and the progress:

AR750s Slate dropped from Openwrt tree Technical Support for Routers

Working off master… latest log there… Seem like perhaps yes… $ git log | grep AR750 ath79: re-enable image generation for GL-AR750S ath79: improve status LED definitions for GL-AR750 Improve the status LED functionality in GL-AR750 ar71xx: use status led for GL.iNet GL-AR750S ath79: add support for GL.iNet GL-AR750S when porting the ath79: GL-AR750S (NOR/NAND): limit factory.img kernel size to 2 MB The present U-Boot for GL-AR750S has a limit of 2 MB for kernel size. Fixes: b496a2294c ("ath79:…

All the sources are here:

GitHub

GitHub - gl-inet/openwrt: This repository is fork from openwrt official repo,...

This repository is fork from openwrt official repo, we will update the latest tag and release GL.iNet firmware based on it. - GitHub - gl-inet/openwrt: This repository is fork from openwrt official...

And here is the AR750s NAND:

github.com/gl-inet/openwrt

feat: support ar750s-nor-nand

committed 10:52AM - 16 Apr 20 UTC

+219 -1

Also when i said 3 years, its not a hard limit. The AR750s is one of the most popular routers that GL sells. As with all open source projects, once support is over, fixes will still trickle in from the community and if you are a good customer and ask nicely