[misanthropos]

Router: tl-wr1043nd v1.0 (was sold as 1.8)

I had been running a r29xxx version for some time so I went for an upgrade.
Encouraged by that upgrade to r53244 which after the first run of 11 days and then +30 days without losing wlan connectivity I went to try a more recent BS version.

But alas... first I had to learn webflash didnt work anymore. And after several attempts to

mtd write factory-to-ddwrt.bin linux

or

mtd write boot.bin+factory-to-ddwrt.bin fullflash

which spits out errors and bricks my router every time.
I was lucky enough not to kill my U-Boot - which still enabled me to use a serial connection to flash it.

I stumbled upon a thread about flashing from U-Boot with tftp, managed to flash my router with the latest TP-Link Firmware (wr1043nv1_en_3_13_15_up_boot(140319).bin) and am now able to unbrick the device easily using that U-Boot tftp to unbrick it.

That said - the only way to install any recent version of ddwrt is by bricking it - reverting to original firmware via U-boot tftp - and using the original firmware to flash a factory-to-ddwrt.bin.

I read about other users being able to flash their device with mtd - but how?

those 2 examples before just dont work for me.
Attached are binwalks for fullflash of some binaries (fullflash writes includes u-boot). Are those incorrect?

https://pastebin.com/SnDQK8BK
https://pastebin.com/cW9t1bNi

And am I in error to assume a factory-to-ddwrt.bin should be flashable by executing

mtd write factory-to-ddwrt.bin linux

from a running ddwrt box???


update: I found the problem - I produced a uboot.bin file which had 256k instead of 128k and included the header of a firmware - so binwalk would find at 0x20000 a header but of course it restarted a new one 128k later.... (the one I appended)

[misanthropos]

so you can recover without serial (you need a tftp server)
I attached a working uboot.bin.