The power light flashes when the TTL is not connected. As soon as the ground wire (black) makes contact, the light goes out. The only light is the ethernet port 1.
Is there anything at this point or is it a door stop?
[SOLVED] WRT32X back to stock Firmware _________________ "The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep." - Robert Frost
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Joined: 08 May 2018 Posts: 14207 Location: Texas, USA
Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2023 20:09 Post subject:
It's been a hot minute since I did serial on one of my 3200s, but it's the same header on all WRT AC series. Remember, the TX on the router end goes to the RX on the USB UART TTL adapter and the RX on the router end goes to the TX on the USB UART TTL adapter. These things are s'posed to be recoverable, but I am not sure how OpenWRT flashes from factory. If you've overwritten u-boot or something extreme...
kernel-panic69
Sometimes one thing sparks a chain of thoughts that lead to a solution.
Turns out the the TX and RX wires are reversed on the cable I bought compared to the videos I had watched. The three videos I watched were all much the same, on the router, Pin 1 Black Gnd, Pin 2 White Lead TX, Pin 4 Green Lead RX. My cable TX and RX are reversed so, TX is Green and RX is White.
I hooked up that way and I have access via Putty. Yay!
Now I have to determine best flash to get this sorted out.
kernel-panic69 wrote:
It's been a hot minute since I did serial on one of my 3200s, but it's the same header on all WRT AC series. Remember, the TX on the router end goes to the RX on the USB UART TTL adapter and the RX on the router end goes to the TX on the USB UART TTL adapter. These things are s'posed to be recoverable, but I am not sure how OpenWRT flashes from factory. If you've overwritten u-boot or something extreme...
Joined: 08 May 2018 Posts: 14207 Location: Texas, USA
Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2023 2:59 Post subject:
Things happen, although usually the color-coding doesn't change that I've noticed, but I could be oblivious to such things at times
You should be able to at least recover to stock firmware and proceed from there. I would pick which 3rd party firmware to use and stick with it - I wouldn't bother with trying to have DD-WRT and OpenWRT (or stock) co-exist. _________________ "Life is but a fleeting moment, a vapor that vanishes quickly; All is vanity"
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Linux User #377467 counter.li.org / linuxcounter.net
As well, several solutions ASSUME you have SSH and there isn't in this state and those are among the 'prescribed' solutions.
Then there's the VENOM Flat image stuff that's supposed to be the path back to factory. Reluctant to try for fear of potentially making it worse.
If I get pointed in a direction and I'll always figure it out. I'm a master searcher and find most everything I ever need to learn.
Finding the actual solution for this stuff is convoluted as F$%@!
Like someone else mentioned, there so many posts, with so many varied experiences and results, nearly no two things are the same, and your head starts to spin. You don't want to try anything for fear of making it worse.
i.e. Even in the examples above, there's no explanation of getting kwboot to actually function. Sure, copy it to a folder and run it. linux doesn't work that way. 24 hours later, a headache, no sleep, sore eyes and no further ahead. I grew up with CLI on Amiga Unix and linux is still a pain in the arse.
Well, since I likely don't have much to lose at this point, I tried this;
Major fail x 3. All you had to do was power on, press keyboard keys to interrupt boot process for a venom prompt.
Now you will have to restore u-boot to WRT32X, also hope you made printenv backup before making any changes.
There's a second photo of my WRT32x now running as a WRT3200ACM.
Most of the U-Boot recovery tutorials posted here and elsewhere all reference the same 0x200000 or 0x2000000 address references as write 'destinations'. Each attempt I made, everything responded as it should, erasures and writes were showing successful but it wasn't working. I then found one other reference with a some different and extra commands, along with a different write to address. That is what got it working. I understand what it was doing, I just haven't been able to find the answer as to why the particular address is chosen or used.
Either way, it booted up as a WRT32x. I know what it did and does and the other set of files for the WRT3200ACM are no different in that they program the same hardware in a different way.
It reminds me of SmartCards, Free To Air, that kind of thing. You are instructing the environment to load a binary or program to an address or address range. Then you make a call to write/install that to another location or with smart cards and that kind of thing, you can also run small bits of program code.
I've put the device back to WRT32x and I'll likely put a DD-WRT on Partition 2. For most purposes, the WRT32x does what one needs. The Wi-Fi is solid, at least in my experience. I do not have a bone stock 32x to compare so I don't know if the Venom Flat image made any changes but I can SSH into the factory 'stock' router at this point.
With my stock 3200ACM, I cannot.
With the 32x, I like the apparent ability to SSH in either way so I can Putty in, change my boot partition, reboot and bounce back and forth between factory and DD-WRT as I choose or need.
Last edited by GDTech on Sat Mar 18, 2023 9:07; edited 2 times in total