That was fun, I just spent a couple of hours trying to debrick a $5 router I just purchased.<\/p>\n
It wasn’t to fix it, it was the challenge. \u00a0I purchased another WRT160N from RePC. \u00a0It was just $5. \u00a0 I got a stock dd-wrt on it when I decided to upgrade it to another version. \u00a0Unfortunately, the other version of for a v3 and the version I got was a v1.<\/p>\n
I am fortunate to have a lot of tools in place for this. \u00a0A soldering iron, USB-TTL adapter, tftp software.<\/p>\n
So after bricking a 30\/30\/30 wasn’t going to fix it. \u00a0Also there was no web page like the v3 version has to go in to. \u00a0So I had to go the serial console route.<\/p>\n
One of the things I did not have was the original firmware. \u00a0Heck I didn’t even know what the filenames was.<\/p>\n
After some deep looking a found a mediafire probably infected site that said the file name was “WRT160N 1.02.11 001 US code.bin”<\/p>\n
It was not safe to download it from there so I put it in my search engine and came accross a ddwrt site which was more respectable.<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.dd-wrt.com\/phpBB2\/viewtopic.php?p=979510<\/p>\n
Then I booted the thing and quickly pressed CTRL+C, it had to be really fast on boot. \u00a0The instant I plugged the AC power in I had to press CTR+C (I think any key may have worked)<\/p>\n
I booted the thing,went in to CFE mode. \u00a0I didn’t know the command but<\/p>\n
Here was a link to some of my options.<\/p>\n
https:\/\/wiki.openwrt.org\/doc\/techref\/bootloader\/cfe<\/p>\n
I tried being a tftp server but that did not work. \u00a0I got a code -4. \u00a0But in hindsight the upload may have worked.<\/p>\n
I tried the tftp client mode, this is where I set up a TFTP server on my laptop, and the router would download<\/p>\n
Here is the command I issed at the CFE prompt<\/p>\n
flash -ctheader 192.168.1.100:fw.bin flash0.trx<\/pre>\nFrom the server it showed a successful transfer, but I still got the -4 error.<\/p>\n
I took a chance and rebooted. \u00a0And it came back, low and behold to the original firmware from linksys<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
That was fun, I just spent a couple of hours trying to debrick a $5 router I just purchased. It wasn’t to fix it, it was the challenge. \u00a0I purchased another WRT160N from RePC. \u00a0It was just $5. \u00a0 I … Continue reading