WL-500g Premium died After Upgrading Firmware

[thenextdon13]

Thank you again, Oleg.

I will look into it later tonight

take care..
Camden

On the circuit board there is a silkscreen showing the spot for a header that has uart0 and uart1 tx and rx, as well as ground, 3.3v reference, and something labled 'reset' (i believe).

Oleg-- if you're listening-- Do you use that 3.3 volt feed as your supply for the rs232 chip? I assume yes.....

Hope this helps.. I will be trying to find the right capacitors for the max232 chip today after work, or at least find the spec sheet for the ones I have...

take care

Camden

[calaba]

Is somewhere described the pinout of the UART in WL500gp ?

Thx, ric.

[Randale91]

Please try to get MAX3232.

This chip is well designed for 3,3V logic level.
Please keep this in mind. Do not use MAX232!!!!
And yes, please use the 3,3V port pin from asus connector to power the MAX3232 chip.
You also need 5 capacitors.

[thenextdon13]

Thank you, I would have made that mistake-- did not realize the difference, hadn't looked at the data sheets yet.

I will source a max 3232 Thank you!

Camden

Okay, no one locally has 3232's so I will have to order one.

Seeing as Digi-Key's minimum order is 20 or 25$, is there anyone that needs one in the US, my treat? First come first serve.... i'll pick up the units and the caps needed for the charge pumps....

Camden

[Oleg]

better buy usb phone cable with prolific chipset... It should be cheaper...

[thenextdon13]

better buy usb phone cable with prolific chipset... It should be cheaper...

OK, so the USB phone adapters have a 3 volt rs232 converter built into them? hmmmm

What model of phone are your converters from? Or is this in another forum/howto for the wrt?

Thanks, Oleg!
Camden

Hey all,
Thanks for the help, I have found the wiki pages for openwrt describing what phone cables to use, etc.

Unfortunatly I don't have any old cables around, and none of the stores in town carry cables with inline boxes... so it will be a little while before I end up set up.

Thanks again for the help, will reply to this forum as things come up (particularily just how hosed the unit is)

take care
Camden

[thenextdon13]

Hey all--

I ended up finding a serial cable for a siemens c55. After checking the tx -> ground voltages, and them being right around 3.4 volts (as per http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/HowTo/AddASerialPort), I decided that this must be an okay cable to use.

I set minicom for 115200 8 N 1 as per http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/HowTo/AddASerialPort and http://www.rwhitby.net/nslu2/serial.html

I double checked my minicom settings by tying tx and rx together, and got character echo.

Still no connection on either uart pair.

So, i moved on to reading more about wtzm's issues here: http://wl500g.info/showthread.php?t=859
as well as wvr's post here:
http://wl500g.info/showthread.php?t=...ighlight=pin10

And it appears that wvr's unit showed the same characteristics as mine, but shorting A20/pin10 to ground for even a long period of time had no effect.

If no one has any other suggestions or ideas, I am ready to can the unit and get another.

If someone would like to play with the unit and see if they can figure out what happened, I will ship it to them free of charge. It will probably be missing the mini-pci card, however....

Camden

[JohnS@]

Hey guys!

I got myself a bricked router (don't know how it was bricked exactly because I received it in this state from its former user)... still I wonder if someone has an idea as to what course of action to take when the following serial console output is the only thing that the router will output:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
CFE version 1.0.37 for BCM947XX (32bit,SP,LE)
Build Date: ¤@ 6¤ë 12 16:31:07 CST 2006 (root@localhost.localdomain)
Copyright (C) 2000,2001,2002,2003 Broadcom Corporation.

Initializing Arena
Initializing Devices.
rndis0: Broadcom USB RNDIS Network Adapter (P-t-P)
CPU type 0x29006: 264MHz
Total memory: 33554432 KBytes

Total memory used by CFE: 0x80800000 - 0x8089B670 (636528)
Initialized Data: 0x808317E0 - 0x80833EC0 (9952)
BSS Area: 0x80833EC0 - 0x80835670 (6064)
Local Heap: 0x80835670 - 0x80899670 (409600)
Stack Area: 0x80899670 - 0x8089B670 (8192)
Text (code) segment: 0x80800000 - 0x808317E0 (202720)
Boot area (physical): 0x0089C000 - 0x008DC000
Relocation Factor: I:00000000 - D:00000000

Device eth0: hwaddr 00-XX-XX-XX-XX-XX, ipaddr 192.168.1.1, mask 255.255.255.0
gateway not set, nameserver not set
Null Rescue Flag.
Boot program checksum is invalid
Hello!! Enter Rescue Mode: (Check error)

Reading :: TFTP Server.
Failed.: Timeout occured
Reading :: TFTP Server.
Failed.: Timeout occured
[this continues forever]
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Additional notes:
1) Although it seems that an IP address is assigned to eth0 I can not ping the router (of course I have set a static IP in the same subnet on the computer I'm trying to connect from)!
2) The MAC address in the console output above has been altered for this posting, in real life looks like it should.
2) Recovery mode: same output except that it says "Hello!! Enter Rescue Mode: (Forced!)"
3) Pin shorting has not changed anything (Pin 9)
4) Neither TFTP or the ASUS Utility can connect to the router, not even in forced recovery mode.... probably because the router can not even be pinged (cp. point 1).

... sombeody got an idea how I can get some life back into the device?

[Tronix]

What's port you are used, when you connect your desktop to router? MAN or LAN? Try to used different port...

[JohnS@]

What's port you are used, when you connect your desktop to router? MAN or LAN? Try to used different port...

tnx, tronix. I tried the following:

1) as usual one of the LAN ports ... tried all four (just to make sure)
2) tried WAN (which should not work) and which also did not work

what worries me when looking closely at the console output is especially the following:

--------from console output -----------------------
Initializing Arena
Initializing Devices.
rndis0: Broadcom USB RNDIS Network Adapter (P-t-P)
---------------------------------------------------

... should't there be also the eth0 LAN adapter that is initialized at this point?

[Tronix]

Try folowing (from Oleg's russian FAQ):

1) Turn off router power.
2) Push (and keep pushed) RESTORE button and turn on router power.
3) Still wait, when POWER led is blinking (about 1 sec.) and push-out RESTORE button.
4) Connect by cross-over or patch-cord to anything LAN port on router.
5) In Windows TCP/IP config set static IP 192.168.1.2 (if router has address 192.168.1.1) and network mask 255.255.255.0. Disable all firewalls.
6) ping 192.168.1.1
7) tftp -i 192.168.1.1 put your_firmware.trx
Still wait, until your see: ransfer successful: 3706880 bytes in 7 seconds, 529554 bytes/s
8) Wait about ~10 minutes.

PS: Sorry my poor English (

[JohnS@]

tronix, tnx for your input but this problem unfortunately goes much deeper!

I have restored many WL-500gP the way you referenced but this works only works if 192.168.1.1 can be successfully pinged!
In my case now, even in forced recovery mode, the router does not answer to 192.168.1.1 ... nor does it send any packets out (I checked with ethereal/wireshark).

So looking at the serial console output I fear that the network interfaces are no longer initialized properly (cause unknown!).

On a WRT54G I'd know it's time for JTAG in such a case .... but so far I have not found information about the JTAG pins for the WL-500gP ...

[soshea]

Hello all,

I managed to brick two brand new wl500gp routers, just call me dum and dumer . If anyone wants them just drop me a email and i will give you the address so you can arrange pickup (Brisbane).

I strongly recommend anyone considering using the wl500gp with alternative firmware, DD-WRT, OLEG, or OpenWRT to stick with the linksys hardware. These WL500's are technically better but the units are bugger, in that hardware reset and update process do not work very well at all.

I have tried all the methods suggested, reset, Firmware restoration, etc, with the expection of adding a serial port, which is just not worth my time!

[JohnS@]

update: the router is still dead...

from the console output I got the idea that maybe USB could be an option:

-----
Initializing Devices.
rndis0: Broadcom USB RNDIS Network Adapter (P-t-P)
-----

so now I tried rndis as well

Would mean that at least the USB ports are initialized in a RNDIS compatible mode, unfortunately a USB Link cable (with PL-2501NW chipset ... supposedly remote ndis and peer to peer capable) did not establish a link....

somebody every used this interface for a recovery ... or does sombody have another idea about how to reanimate my dead router?

[Tronix]

Okay, I'am sorry, I not understood your problem. Unfortunately, i don't know, how help you.
May be this log help you:

CFE version 1.0.37 for BCM947XX (32bit,SP,LE)
Build Date: ¤T 12¤ë 14 15:54:18 CST 2005 (root@localhost.localdomain)
Copyright (C) 2000,2001,2002,2003 Broadcom Corporation.

Initializing Arena
Initializing Devices.
et0: Broadcom BCM47xx 10/100 Mbps Ethernet Controller 3.90.23.0
rndis0: Broadcom USB RNDIS Network Adapter (P-t-P)
CPU type 0x29006: 264MHz
Total memory: 33554432 KBytes

Total memory used by CFE:  0x80800000 - 0x8089B590 (636304)
Initialized Data:          0x80831700 - 0x80833DE0 (9952)
BSS Area:                  0x80833DE0 - 0x80835590 (6064)
Local Heap:                0x80835590 - 0x80899590 (409600)
Stack Area:                0x80899590 - 0x8089B590 (8192)
Text (code) segment:       0x80800000 - 0x80831700 (202496)
Boot area (physical):      0x0089C000 - 0x008DC000
Relocation Factor:         I:00000000 - D:00000000

Device eth0:  hwaddr 00-17-31-D6-3C-DD, ipaddr 10.84.0.220, mask 255.255.255.0
        gateway not set, nameserver not set
Null Rescue Flag.
Loader:raw Filesys:raw Dev:flash0.os File: Options:(null)
Loading: .. 3560 bytes read
Entry at 0x80001000
Closing network.
Starting program at 0x80001000
...etc...