First off, I apologize for dragging this thread out again, many years after it was started. And please believe me I used this as a last resort and have been struggling with this for some time.

The trouble:
Asus Restoration tool says: Upload Fails! Please check the connection.
tftp says: Timeout occured.

Some background:
My mac: 00:0D:3A:70:C4:F0
I can get it into firmware restoration mode.
I can ping the router, (if I clear nvram on the previous boot)
I used nvserial and the magical files within mn700.zip, both in Knoppix and Ubuntu, with identical results.
I can flash the cfe and back it up to get the same file.
Using the wan port on the router I get the "No router found in restoration mode" error. Using the lan port I get the upload fails error.

My suspicion:
I'm consistently making a bad cfe.

My question:
Anybody got any suggestions?