Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2012 4:28 Post subject: Possible Bricked WRT54GL - Help Requested :)
Straight to it...
I picked up a WRT54GL v1.1 quite recently and successfully loaded DD-WRT onto it (dd-wrt.v24-12548_NEWD_mini.bin). The mini had everything I needed on it so didn't bother going beyond that. I continued to configure it as needed (setup WAN, open ports, etc).
Things have been working great for about a week until all of a sudden, completely out of the blue, it just died.
The power LED flashes very fast and after about 20 seconds it lights permanently, but the DMZ LED did not light up. In this case Bootloader and Kernel (firmware) are intact, only a wrong configuration from locked up the router. This can happen if a wrong or corrupt value exists in the NVRAM. Here simply clearing the NVRAM should solve the problem.
Worth noting, the lights for ports 1-4 as well as the "Internet" light are on. DMZ an WLAN are off.
The router has been completely unresponsive; I don't even get a link light on my computer when plugging directly into it.
The 30/30/30 reset hasn't done anything and attempting to go to "management mode" hasn't worked either.
I'm completely stumped. I've read as much as I could and have been very careful. I'm really hoping someone more familiar with this may have some more insight. From what I've read not even getting a link light sounds really bad and I'm worried I may have bricked this thing.
It is bricked. Sudden bricking for no apparent reason are usually hardware failure. See the peacock announcement, note 6. _________________ SIG:
I'm trying to teach you to fish, not give you a fish. If you just want a fish, wait for a fisherman who hands them out. I'm more of a fishing instructor.
LOM: "If you show that you have not bothered to read the forum announcements or to follow the advices in them then the level of help available for you will drop substantially, also known as Murrkf's law.."
Thanks for the quick reply Murrkf. So it seems the next option left is trying to fix it via JTAG, and this requires some soldering and a donation for the software, correct? If it's a hardware issue, is it even worth bothering to try and attempt it?
Any idea if the hardware failure would have been inevitable, or if it was actually caused by having DD-WRT loaded onto it? Assuming I can get it working again (or replace it, if necessary) I'm curious if I should bother again with DD-WRT on this router in the future.
I have several GLs running dd-wrt quite smoothly. Hardware failure is hardware failure. Open it up and take a look. Jtag is cheap and you won't know until you try it. If it is not hardware failure, it can be fixed. _________________ SIG:
I'm trying to teach you to fish, not give you a fish. If you just want a fish, wait for a fisherman who hands them out. I'm more of a fishing instructor.
LOM: "If you show that you have not bothered to read the forum announcements or to follow the advices in them then the level of help available for you will drop substantially, also known as Murrkf's law.."