[joekuta]

flashing tips/help/info

WARNING: the following is advise for TESTING purposes only
I have not found a permanent solution for the router problem
(sometimes it does not come back from a reboot or reset)
IN WHICH CASE U MUST FOLLOW MY ADVISE TO UNBRICK!
The K26 w/NEWD-2 offers better wireless performance

I was not happy with the wireless N-drivers in all K24 builds (NEWD)
,EKO's K24 NEWD-2 builds drop the wl1 radio on WNDR3300, (it appears all do)
. NEWD signal was OK (~60) and i could get a 5Ghz connection "rate" (162+)
but my throughput (iperf) was only 20-30mbps (down/up), maximized after
days of testing EVERY channel & many extreme locations
I found the newer wireless driver (NEWD-2) to perform a lot better on the WNDR3300 for N
all K26 uses this newer driver

With K26 my signal is about the same but i get 30-40mbps through 3 nodes, 50-60 through 2, a long distance
u might laugh at +10mbps for all this work but that made it fast enough (6MB/s) for me


THE IMPORTANT STUFF

the following i found to be helpful
1. do a double 30-30-30 reset prior to flashing
ie Reset, wait, Reset again
2. only flash from a *k24.bin or *k26.bin build
I.E. don't flash K26 from the stock firmware!
Don't flash from the *ddwrt.chk file either! Flash from a CURRENT build
3. it may be helpful to reflash the same K26 build
4. Save your settings once setup because the router(s)
will likely need to be restored from a reflash/reset
failure to reboot happened more on some of my WNDR3300 than others
but reflashing seem to work the bug out
i don't know what breaks them or if it's just luck or a setting

THE MOST IMPORTANT:
IF you 30-30-30 reset after flashing K26 it
WILL NOT COME BACK. it will "BRICK"
Immediately after the blue dome goes off, u can tell u have a K26 build b/c
the WAN+4LAN flash & then your radio lights come on. U can tell ur router is
bricked if this doesn't happen- they never come on. u can't get into the router

Instead, power cycle after flashing (optional)
and reset from within DD-WRT GUI (Administration/Factory Defaults)

Or DON'T reset at all after flashing *(i haven't tested the stability of not resetting after flashing,
but the router was already reset, twice, prior to flashing so it might be less trouble to just not reset AFTER flashing. Especially if reflashing from a K26 build

***u MUST power cycle AFTER a reset***
if ur lucky the lights will come on,
but if u don't power cycle the router won't respond

IF THE RADIO LIGHTS DON'T COME ON AFTER FLASHING
you should probably reflash
or if you reset the router and it didn't come back u broke it
DON'T WORRY

unbricking
start pinging the router from command line continuously
CMD> ping -t <your ip assigned by the router>
if u don't know which ip run ipconfig 1st
I like to setup a static IP for flashing so it's always the same (TCP/IP properties in LAN properties)

if ur router is plugged in you should get ping responses
Unplug the router, wait until the responses are Destination Host Unreachable
Then plug the router back in
As long as you are still pinging the router,
it will come back online. *U can also begin pinging w/it unplugged

From here, you can try to reset again within DD-WRT
however I would recommend reflashing the K26

Rinse, reuse, repeat
until it resets/power cycles properly (good luck )



[[REFERENCES]]

I have 5 WNDR3300 flashed K26 connected in WDS
using the BS 14594 K26 mini build
dd-wrt.v24-14594_NEWD-2_K2.6_mini.bin

I have spent the last week+ working through various firmwares, EKO and BS brainslayer
K26: 13575, 14205, 14289, 14584 and 14594
K24: 13000M, 13637, 14569, 14473, 14537, 14583, 14594

[joekuta]

my god

i am surprised i was able to flash ANYTHING
i just determined my integrated NIC to be broken
it couldn't lookup any websites

Is that possible? For the hardware to not be able to get to a nameserver,
but it can navigate to any IP?

crazy

[joekuta]

1 other thing about doing the reset from inside DD-WRT
make sure to wait a full 30-30-30 before trying anything

i also added that u MUST power cycle AFTER a reset
otherwise ur gonna have to unbrick it for sure

[Dark_Shadow]

http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=63757

[joekuta]

[btechnet]

Good write-up!, I have run EKO 14205M k2.6 without any problems to speak of. No -non-boot problems, slow boot problems.

I have never tried to flash from stock to straight k2.6 before, I have always done a stock to k2.4 then to k2.6. I can confirm that this process works.

[twinmos]

Thanks joekuta!

[joekuta]

[seeingwhite]

This thread has some great info. Thanks OP. I managed to get the latest k26 NEWD-2 build running. It took some effort and lots of ping-recovers that you detailed. I am thinking about going back to k24 though because k26 builds still feel like a lot of work.

On a side note, does anyone know how to get vlans working with our 3300s? I know that the 4704 rev9 CPU doesn't support vlans, but some threads seem to report varied success.

Thanks again.

[PeteBest]

I just flashed 14205M NEWD-2 Eko std-nokaid-nohot-nostore and after my router has come back I can no longer see wl1, noticed some of the older k26 threads mentioned this, but I thought it was fixed... Any of you guys got this problem? Thanks!

[buddee]

[PeteBest]

[buddee]

This is odd, because some people loose their wl1 radio on K2.6 still, i have tested (though i still revert back to NEWD) almost all the Eko k2.6 builds from 14205 on and have not had any problems with wl1

[seeingwhite]

wl1 was working fine for me. Great signal, speed, etc.

Also, I was able to do a 30/30/30 reset without trouble. I did have some other stability issues which I can't pinpoint, though, so I am reverting back to K24 today.

[PeteBest]