Can a Mercury router be flashed? After searching through Enshan Mountain, I gave up—what holds it is not the password, but that chip; Tenda left one door

cousin bought a second-hand Tenda AC10 for 58 yuan last week. The seller said, "This machine can be flashed," and he took it seriously. His calculations were clear: my N1 box works well as a bypass router to hang ads, the bypass router article he has read more than once, wanting to copy this AC10 and add another layer to the room where he places Synology. After hearing this, I poured cold water on the situation—whether it can be flashed or not, it's not about the seller's words, but about the chip and flash memory. To make sure he didn't waste his effort, I flipped through Eunshan's post and also did the math on Mercury's side. This is the conclusion.

first about Mercury: those chips on sale were welded shut right from the factory

start with my own home. My cousin's main router is the Mercury D191G. My family has also disassembled the same model and wanted to flash it with OpenWrt. There are plenty of people on the platform, and all the replies are just four words: can't be flashed. There are two reasons, each stronger than the last.

first is the chip. The D191G uses TP1900N, and it's no coincidence that the TP in its name is Mercury — Mercury is originally a sub-brand of the TP-LINK system. This MediaTek custom chip only serves TP-series proprietary firmware, with no open-source drivers at all, so it's hard to even adapt to OpenWrt. The second is flash storage, which is only 4MB per device. Nowadays, a decent OpenWrt firmware starts at 8MB, which is hard to get into. If either of these two sticks is taken, the flashing issue can be put on hold. The D191G takes up both sticks.

this custom chip approach is not unique to the D191G; many of Mercury's D and X series models have done the same. I mentioned in the of the article about unpacking Mercury model codes that this brand's hardware is tightly cut for hundred-yuan machines, and custom chips are made by cutting costs—the manufacturer never intended for you to farm. By the way, to be fair, if you don't flash your device, Mercury can be used as a regular router. Just download the firmware from the official website. The process the Mercury firmware upgrade article before.

Mercury is an exception for a few old antiques, most of whom no longer have

to be fair, the saying "Mercury can't be farmed" can't be rigid; there are exceptions, but two conditions must be met: old, and the platform must be mainstream.

the most classic is MW4530R, the Qualcomm Atheros platform, officially listed on OpenWrt. You can find a whole basket of tutorials with a quick search, making it the best-selling phone in Mercury's history. The problem is, this machine was discontinued more than ten years ago. If we really have one at home, it's probably just gathering dust in the storage room and the flash memory is old. The D121G is another path: MediaTek's MT7620 solution. The community has precedents of flashing Breed before third-party firmware, but if the flash memory shrinks to 8MB, only the simplified firmware fits in, making it hard to play well. Later on is the D21G, which has an even higher threshold—Ensan's tutorial starts with an SOP8 clip clamping the flash memory chip into the programmer, dumping the factory firmware, and if you've never even touched a soldering iron, just glance at it and then give up.

I showed my cousin the accounts of these three machines: either they were discontinued archaeological items, or they had to be programmed and ironed. His conclusion was straightforward—Mercury gave up on the other side and looked at Tenda.

Tenda models by type: AC9 is a legendary device but depends on flash storage; AC10 requires understanding V-

Tengda's side is much livelier, but the pitfalls are deeper, with each car being told one by one.

AC9 is Tenda's flashing miracle device, the Broadcom solution, capable of flashing ASUS firmware. This machine's gameplay has been refined in Enshan for nearly ten years, following CFE recovery mode: manually configure the IP on the computer, hold down the reset button to plug in the power, and flash it into the CFE interface. It's not the same approach as MediaTek's Breed camp; Broadcom Machines recognize CFE, and their tools and processes are all on their own, so copying posts isn't too difficult. It sounds nice, but before buying second-hand storage, you have to ask about the flash storage version—AC9 comes in 8MB and 16MB versions. The 16MB version (mostly Telecom custom versions) can directly install ASUS firmware, the 8MB version requires converting the flash memory to 16MB first, the 64MB version still lags after flashing, and for smoother RAM, you need to upgrade the RAM to 128MB. At this stage, soldering iron skills and patience are both essential; this is no longer called flashing the machine, it's transplant surgery. Ordinary players should stop when they see the word "hard modification," but practicing welding for an old machine costing only a few dozen yuan is not worth it.

about the AC10 my cousin owned. The early batch of AC10 was MediaTek's MT7621 solution, and the community did have some adaptation. OpenWrt's official support was limited, and many firmware had to be compiled by themselves. The real pitfall was the version number: the AC10 was sold from V1 to V6.0, with more than one hardware swap in between. The firmware between different versions wasn't interchangeable, and the wrong flash turned it into a brick. My cousin's phone flipped over the label on the back: V6.0—the late V6.0 and the V1 community system basically run parallel. The seller's claim about 'can be brushed' was probably something he saw from V1's tutorial posts. How to match Tenda's firmware to hardware versions? the firmware upgrade article mentioned the rule of triple alignment. Even when flashing official firmware, it's stricter; third-party firmware is even stricter.

As for the AX and BE series currently on sale, the doors are tighter than Mercury's, and almost no one touches them in the community. But I've seen posts about the Taishan BE12 Pro flashing OpenWrt without disassembling, which is a niche exception. Ordinary families shouldn't expect their AX12 to get this kind of treatment.

finish farming? First, calculate the income account clearly

I laid it out: even if your machine can reload, don't rush to make a move—you need to calculate the revenue first.

most people want to flash their phones, they only want three things: removing ads, installing plugins, and multi-dialing. First, look at the ads—the essence of this is DNS filtering. You can do 70-80% without flashing your phone. Mercury's backend changes DNS to a public DNS with filtering, and your phone and computer will take effect. The specific entry point is in the article on setting DNS on Mercury. Now let's look at plugins—the AC10 generation MT7621 dual-core 880MHz CPU. When you really run the plugin package, gigabit broadband can drop to two or three hundred Mbps. I tested this in my article on router CPUs, and soft forwarding trades speed for functionality. If you dial more, don't even worry about it. Nowadays, carriers have one broadband per account and are tightly controlled. Most cities can't stack the stack for long, so flashing your phone for this is just wasted.

After hearing this,

cousin immediately downgraded the AC10's "flashing frenzy" to "just use it as an AP first." His old AC10 was already working at AP, and with the new one, he planned to supplement the signal for my aunt's room—no hassle, and both now have legitimate use.

really want to stir things up, I've picked two paths for you

after reading all this, you still want to play OpenWrt. Don't compete on the 100-yuan Mercury Tengda—there are two ready-made paths.

the first item, spend money on ecologically sound machines. For about 90 yuan, I bought a Redmi CR8809. After flashing the carrier-customized version and using the reference firmware, I got the same treatment as the Redmi AX3000. The inspection and flashing method are in CR8809 ; If your budget is a bit more generous, the Redmi AX6S just over a hundred yuan is a true evergreen favorite. OpenWrt has been feeding it for years, and the official unlock door is still open. AX6S flashing post the full process. Having Xiaomi AX3000T makes it easier to handle—you can swipe it in just six steps and even return to the official anytime; Don't throw away the old Xiaomi Router 3 you found in your drawer—just flash a Padavan as a bypass router for your TV. Padavan is exactly what it was done. These machines start at 128MB of flash memory and have enough community tutorials, which is a completely different world from Mercury's 4MB.

second rule: keep the machine still and move the tossy work out. Leave ads to DNS, delegate the plugin suite to NAS's Docker, use N1 box or soft routers for side routers, and run official firmware for the main router—that's how I divide the work. The main router is reliable, and no matter how much you try, it doesn't damage the big network. Once you figure this out, you'll find that flashing solves "router insufficient freedom," not "poor network quality."

Wrap-up: A checklist for three minutes, decide whether to stay or leave

compress the above conclusions into a table and assign them accordingly:

cousin's 58 yuan isn't wasted; the AC10 is more than enough to serve as an AP. He later summed it up with a pretty apt sentence: the seller said it could be repainted, just like the landlord said the house could be converted into a loft—he didn't look at the structural drawings at all. Next time someone uses "flashing capability" as a selling point to sell you Mercury Tenda, have them clearly photograph the label on the back, align the chip and flash memory columns with the chart in this article, and it can be revealed in three minutes.