Posted: Sat May 17, 2025 6:20 Post subject: e3000 keeps rebooting if theres just a hint of communication
my trusty e3000 with my favourite ddwrt, of more than 19 years, now reboots into a bootloop if i try to connect to it either wirelessly or with a lan cable. I am on k3 build 50906. I use it as a repeater bridge to my mobile hotspot.
it started rebooting one day in the middle of work. i changed the powerbrick. did a 30-30-30 multiple times but to no use.
It's still my daily driver so after letting it lie quiet for a whole day i tried again and this is what happens-
It will now boot with the power and wifi leds stable.
It will show ddwrt in the wifi menu of a computer but try to connect it and it will start rebooting.
if i try to connect a computer via lan cable into its port, it will start rebooting the moment the lan cable slides in.
rarely, it will connect both wirelessly or via lan. BUT the moment i open a browser to get into its webgui, it will start rebooting uncontrollably.
Its like its allergic to any connection to it.
Yes, the powerbrick is new rated at 12v 2amp. plus i checked 2 other ones.
I did open the router and check the voltages at the diodes. all within specs mentioned on the pcb.
And, yes, i changed all four 470uf and two 100uf caps for good measure... 19 years may take a toll on their health.
But no joy.
Posted: Sun May 18, 2025 5:29 Post subject: Re: e3000 keeps rebooting if theres just a hint of communica
drajinkyas wrote:
my trusty e3000 with my favourite ddwrt, of more than 19 years
It's not quite that old, E3000 came out in 2010.
But if it's also unstable on FreshTomato too then it's probably done. All my E3000 are still perfectly stable on Freshtomato-MIPs (RT, not RT-N) and they've been overclocked with nvram set clkfreq=532,266,133 for a dozen years, with 2.5A PSUs (I thought the original 1.5A were a bit small). I preemptively replaced the same electrolytics you did only with polymers way back then, and left alone the very large 25v 1000mF primary side electrolytics which smooth the input from the power brick. These things ran hot around 55C and I think the original caps were only rated 1000hrs@105C so that only works out to just over 3.5 years for the one nearest the chip.
I love DD-WRT but these things are in a rather inaccessible location in an attic and it would be a real inconvenience to have to connect directly to any to recover from the occasional bad build, plus the extra features aren't needed there. Someone may be by to report if a newer DD-WRT build works, but the latest currently reported working in the forums is r58881 and r58850, by someone who did not specify if they were using it as AP or gateway. And there's not a lot of people reporting use of repeater bridge mode at all for MIPs.
