WL-500g Premium died After Upgrading Firmware

[jbroom]

Hi guys,
I have an Asus WL-500g Premium which I had loaded a couple of months back with DD-WRT to play with, but then set apart because with the settings I had done it became hard to connect to (can't remember what I did!).
I now pull it off the shelf to reflash it, and when I connect it all I get are 5 orange LEDs on and steady. These are the WAN and all the LAN leds. The power & AIR leds do not light/blink/anything.
When plugging in power with reset pressed it stays the same.
I've opened the unit and I THINK I've correctly shorted PIN-9 to ground for aprox 20 secs with power connected, and it still stays the same.
I've looked through the forums but all the posts regarding birck/dead seem to have one which is not "as dead" as my one seems...
Is it dead? Any suggestions? How hard should I hit it with a hammer (or would it be best to let my 10 month old son play with it instead?).
Thanks in advance.

[brickedkalle]

Hi all!

I've bricked my wl-500gp probably by unplugging the power cord to early during firmware upload (but I'm not sure for this, because I was waiting a few minutes before unplugging). Now I can't get the rescue mode by holding the reset switch and there seems to be no serial output on UART_TX0 nor UART_TX1 (I used a scope). After power on, the four LAN LEDs are lighting up for one or two seconds and then they're going dark. If an ethernet wire is connected, the light is flashing by traffic. The power LED stays dark all the time. Shorting pin 9 or 10 doesn't work. Seems that there is even no CFE loader... :-(

Hope for your help...

Seems to be the same as here: http://wl500g.info/showthread.php?t=11724

[pinkfloyd]

2 days ago I installed the latest firmware from dd-wrt to try Kai with my psp....everything was working fine except Kai...Today I rebooted the router from the web and after it rebooted I have no connections at all.....

I tried both wireless and Lan and nothing


Tried to restore back to Oleg but when I press restore button the power button does not flicker...router lights up normally but no connection at all

I think my only solution might be the pin9 hardware thing but after I opened my wl500gp I found out that the image that was posted on this forum is different to my internal router diagram

Please help

UPDATE: pin 9 did the trick. My problem is now that login and password dont seem to match and I cant enter neither via telnet nor the web interface to clear the ram...btw I installed oleg back again

[pripps]

Try failsafe mode as described in open wrt wiki for Asus. I was in the same situation as you and it helped me. But the restore button worked in my case.

[aka]

Problem:
If I plug in the power and start pinging, it responds to ping:

Hardware error.
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=100
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=100
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=100
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=100
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=100
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=100
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=100
Request timed out.

sometimes it starts answering once every 3-4 pings

Hardware error.
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=100
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=100
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=100
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time=5ms TTL=100
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=100

I tried to put it in recovery mode - but it doesn't answer to ping, after I release the recovery button, the power led stops flashing after the first ping attempt.
What I tried:
I opened it up and I think I correctly grounded PIN 9...
No luck .

Any ideas?
Do you guys have any advice?

[Brickmeister]

Hi,

This is one fine mess I've got myself into.
I attempted to flash the firmware of my ASUS WL500G Premium, and it seemed to work but there was something wrong with my nvram settings, so in an effort to start again I believe I've cleared my nvram settings and now I have no IP address to flash further images to.

Can anyone help or have I well and truly bricked it :S ?

Thanks for your time.

Edit: I guess I should add some more details.
The really big problems started when I flashed the router with wl500g-clear-nvram.trx, planning to later flash it with wl500g-recover.trx, however as I understand it the premium doesn't reset to a default but uses the setting in nvram which I just cleared. D'oh! I can get it into what appears to be diag mode, with the power light flashing slowly. Otherwise the power light is solid. It seems no other lights are lighting no matter what is plugged in where.

[newbiefan]

I would install a serial connector (max232 with 3,3V) and have a closer look for the boot messages.

[matrix200]

Hi all,
Here is a very strange bricked router.
After reflashing to dd-wrt and setting a few settings (rebooting each time) it bricked after changing wireless settings.
The router's power led lights up right after it is on and never blinks.
AIR doesn't come on and router is not responding.
Now after trying some debricking procedures (long reset etc) it came on.
All the settings WERE NOT ERASED.
Everything seemed in order.
Then after another power cycle or two it got stuck again (power on but nothing responds).
Should I try the pin 9 trick or it is all lost?

[JoschiBK19]

Hey guys,

yesterday I tried to flash my router with olegs firmware (previously dd-wrt installed) so I uploaded clear-nvram.trx via tftp at first.
Having finished i uploaded the trx from oleg, but it seemed as if it didn't work so I uploaded the dd-wrt trx again and recognized that all settings were still the same, as if the clear-nvram did not work.

So I tried it using the firmware restauration tool from asus, but after flashing with that the router seems to be bricked.
The power LED does not flash anymore (but lan LEDs do), even if I press the reset button while power cycling.

I even tried to ground Pin9 but it didn't work either.
Am I doing something wrong? Or could there be another possibility?
I'm using a small cable to ground the pin but power led doesn't flash after power cycling and pressing reset button again.

I'd be happy If anyone could help me..

Kind regards,
Joschi

[raas]

Having finished i uploaded the trx from oleg, but it seemed as if it didn't work

I've had a similar problem in the past, although I didn't migrate from dd-wrt.

At first it seemed that the firmware-flash hadn't worked, but it needed a couple of (2) reboots in a row, to get it working, after that, I haven't been able to replicate the problem.

[Erusletum]

So this is my third Asus WL-500g Premium.

I installed some firmware and some of my settings bricked it. When I hold in the reset button and plug in the power the power LED does not flash. I tried the Pin 9 trick to get recovery mode back but it is not working.

Any ideas?

Or perhaps I am doing pin 9 wrong? I have the power on and connect pin 9 via a wire to the metal wrap around where the power comes into the circuit board for about 30 seconds. I notice NO CHANGE in the power LED during this time.

[bitbrain2101]

I think pin9 should be connected to ground first, then apply power. Can you ping the router ? I could re-animate my WL-500GP with a "clear NVRAM" firmware flashed with tftp in cmdline window, but you need a ping response.

[OVERKILL]

I have a WL-500W here that I put DD-WRT 2.4 SP1 on after it had randomly frozen one weekend.

It was fine for a couple weeks then locked up. A power cycle was necessary to get it functional again. This then occurred a few times again. Then the last time it happened (Friday) it simply goes to solid LED's on the LAN ports. No illuminuation of the PWR or WLAN LED's.

I tried the PIN 9 method.

Nothing.

Pulled the wireless card out.

And using the 30/30/30 or the Pin-9 method, the switch will function, but nothing for the PWR LED.

Seems to be a total brick now.......?

[wpte]

is your router quite hot after these crashes?
might be a burn or something...

[bkiss]

I will describe below shortly what happened to us.

We have 2 pcs. of asus 500 G Premium. (now both of them is Brick - or
switch - whatever)

My friend wanted to put back the original firmware from asus, he has
DD-WRT - 24 sp1 before, but it was too difficult for him to get the
printer workink.

We use:
1. the original firmware restoration tool from asus,
2. Enter in failsafe mode, restore button and power cord in
3. Upload the file: WL500gp_1.9.7.7_TW.trx
4. Wait until the software finishes about 5 min.
5. after we cut the power and we put it back, the router goes back
automatically in failsafe mode (power led slowly blinking)
6. We use the restoration software again to put the same file again.

7. after this the router it's like a switch. if we connect anything to
the ethernet port the led's are ok, but power led is off, and air is
dimmed.

We have tried already to get in failsafe mode:

1. restore button + powercord in ---> nothing
2. Pin 9 to ground + powercord in (wait) --> nothing
3. tryed also 10, 9/10, 16, 17, 16/17 but nothing
4. we made a connection with max232 -> tx0 rx0 gnd hyperterminal
115000, 8, n, 1, n ---> at boot time we cannot see nothing



We have the same problem with another router 500 gp, but with this one
we proceed different (before it was ddwrt 2.4.sp1):

1.after the first flash WL500gp_1.9.7.7_TW.trx ---> failsafe (we get the power led flashing)
2. put clear-nvram.trx
put recover.trx

after this THE SAME simptoms like you have read before.


If you have any suggestion or solution please let us know.