while trying to upgrade I downloaded v24sp1 std bin for wnr834bv2 from ddwrt homepage, and my router's bricked.
- power light stays orange
- wifi light is blue
- plugging a cable makes the matching light comes green, and it flickers correctly on rx/tx
tried this, in order:
1. ping, no luck, although it responds for 3 seconds after power on with ttl=100, then packets lost.
2. tftp, no luck, transfer times out
3. 'arp -a' gives me the correct mac
4. factory reset button, no luck
5. after reset attempt, ping/arp started to fail unless I maintain factory reset while powering up, which temporarily gives me back previous behavior, but next power up will fail again if I don't hold the button again.
6. ritual dance fails, even if naked
have I just enlisted myself to jtag'ing?
in the mean time I unshelved my good ol' wrt54g v5 with ddwrt v24sp1...
Joined: 26 Jun 2007 Posts: 262 Location: Trinidad & Tobago
Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2008 1:39 Post subject:
Word on the street is if you brick a wnr834bv2, nothing can undo it. This is because of Netgear and their legendary stupidity decided to put some vital stuff on the erasable nvram. I can't recall the specifics but somebody will clarify it for you. I hope you have not destroyed your router though, that would suck. You are supposed to only use the specific .chk file for that router, no .bin.
If you really like that router, frys.com has a refurb one for 35US, you can't go wrong, great buy. _________________ [everything is to be replicate]
it seems that sparkie successfully revived one by jtag though, I'm not equipped with jtag hardware/software but my bet is on that if it's not tftp recoverable.
I just like advice before committing some time/money on learn/buy jtag stuff
what's more, I had initially installed ddwrt with a .chk then upgraded with eko .bin successfully, only v24sp1 failed...
while trying to upgrade I downloaded v24sp1 std bin for wnr834bv2 from ddwrt homepage, and my router's bricked.
- power light stays orange
- wifi light is blue
- plugging a cable makes the matching light comes green, and it flickers correctly on rx/tx
tried this, in order:
1. ping, no luck, although it responds for 3 seconds after power on with ttl=100, then packets lost.
2. tftp, no luck, transfer times out
3. 'arp -a' gives me the correct mac
4. factory reset button, no luck
5. after reset attempt, ping/arp started to fail unless I maintain factory reset while powering up, which temporarily gives me back previous behavior, but next power up will fail again if I don't hold the button again.
6. ritual dance fails, even if naked
have I just enlisted myself to jtag'ing?
in the mean time I unshelved my good ol' wrt54g v5 with ddwrt v24sp1...
khelben's router was like this. I had to reflash the entire thing via jtag. Simply flashing the custom, nvram, and cfe didn't work.
Good news is it only took a few hours to flash the whole thing.
My router experienced different symptoms when turned on with a bad flash (the power light would flash).
If you're not equipped to do your own jtag and are in the US, just mail your router to me with a return shipping label and I'll do it for you.
therefore I'll equip myself with some jtag and soldering stuff, which will come in handy anyway as I love tinkering too much.
as I'm completely new to jtag'ing, may I ask you if you used a buffered or unbuffered link? according to your pinout it seems it's unbuffered, thus only requiring five 100ohm resistors, some cables, and a parallel port.
ah, I'll have to take back online my old PII, as every other computer around here has no parallel port... maybe a usb->parallel adaptator will do?
therefore I'll equip myself with some jtag and soldering stuff, which will come in handy anyway as I love tinkering too much.
as I'm completely new to jtag'ing, may I ask you if you used a buffered or unbuffered link? according to your pinout it seems it's unbuffered, thus only requiring five 100ohm resistors, some cables, and a parallel port.
ah, I'll have to take back online my old PII, as every other computer around here has no parallel port... maybe a usb->parallel adaptator will do?
Unbuffered. Make sure you use no more than 15cm of cable.
I've never tried to use a usb-> parallel port cable with a jtag so I can't for certain say if that will work or not.
It's really not that hard to do. If you can reasonably steady a soldering iron, it takes a whole 2 minutes to attach everything.
Unplug power from the router, plug it back in, and then QUICKLY run the tjtag command to probe only. That will keep it in debug mode so that you can flash it.
as I roamed on some threads around here, I tried that after I posted. and it worked a few times, but then it always failed. (1)
I noticed tjtag said 'cpu in debug mode' when it worked, but 'cpu not in debug mode' when it failed.
I then reckoned my soldering was bad, so I redid the cable. then the router would not even power up... not a single light! I found that very weird as I was very cautious not to short-circuit anything, and my soldering was, well, quite clean. yet it looked very much like a short...
so, I was sort of angry to have definitely bricked the thing (and also, not understanding why) and went to bed.
this morning I then looked at the board carefully, and noticed a stray solder, completely covering two SMT resistors. with the help of a screwdriver I carefully popped the tin away, and lights are back.
so it was indeed a short, as a tin drop splatted over the board.
later I'll see if it responds to jtag now... I'll be lucky if it does.
Last edited by lloeki on Fri Aug 08, 2008 16:08; edited 1 time in total
jtag works, but I can't seem to make processor enter debug mode...
btw now all leds light up (except maybe power, but it might be very faint). this already happened when on point (1) in post above, so this doesn't seem related to the soldering issue.