I have a TP-Link RE200 V1 extender on which I installed the
OpenWRT firmware. That worked perfectly. Now I wanted to restore
the extender to its original state and install the original
firmware. I made a mistake.
After that, unfortunately, nothing worked anymore. When I turn
on the repeater, all the LEDs blink. So I opened the device and
connected it to my notebook via the serial port (PL2302 adapter).
I now have the following menu to choose from.
Please choose the operation:
1: Load system code to SDRAM via TFTP.
2: Load system code then write to Flash via TFTP.
3: Boot system code via Flash (default).
4: Entr boot command line interface.
6: Load ART data then write to Flash via TFTP.
7: Load Boot Loader code then write to Flash via Serial.
9: Load Boot Loader code then write to Flash via TFTP.
TFTP isn't working. I also couldn't get it to work using
menu item "7 via Serial".
Any suggestion is greatly appreciated.
Thank you in advance.
The "back to stock" instructions on the device page are done through OpenWrt on the device. So first you need to get OpenWrt up again. The simplest way to do that is to tftp the initramfs build of OpenWrt to RAM and boot it. This gives you a one-time instance of OpenWrt which can be used to flash either stock or a permanent install of OpenWrt.
Option 1 may work to load the initramfs. Or you can use option 4 and the tftpboot and bootm commands. tftpboot 82000000 filename
It should make a connection to your TFTP server and show several lines of # marks as the file transfers. bootm 82000000
OpenWrt should boot. Then you can continue by entering OpenWrt CLI commands over the serial port.
I use Linux.
I selected option 2 in the boot menu and confirmed
the IP addresses. Unfortunately, I cannot ping the
IP addresses. Therefore, I would like to try it
via the serial interface.
Where can I find out which memory addresses are
correct for the "Boot Loader" and for
"System Load Linux"?
There are several image files for the TP-Link RE200 V1.
tplink_re200-v1-initramfs-kernel.bin
tplink_re200-v1-squashfs-factory.bin
tplink_re200-v1-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin
or on the following page.
https://openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/re200?s[]=tp&s[]=link&s[]=re200
re200v1_tftp.bin
stock_upgrade.bin
Which one do I need to use?
The bootloader does not answer pings. It has a very limited network stack which is only intended for TFTP.
TFTP is about 1000 times faster than Kermit so you should use it. If you have another OpenWrt router it is simple to configure it to be a TFTP server.
Addresses 80xxxxxx are in RAM and bcxxxxxx are in flash. Do not write directly to flash. Load and boot the initramfs image then use it to install the sysupgrade image.
seems calibration data partition (last 64kB of flash) is erased/corrupted.
you certainly lose 5GHz for that, maybe even 2.4, it is not recoverable as it is set in factory do record variance in components used in production.
In addition you need a fixed temperature heat gun (another 50+ bucks) and a micro-soldering station (50 for multi-tip iron, maybe 50 for desk carpet), I promise youll mess up first few times.
Your problem is un-restorable last flash block. If you had 5 devices in series you could "donor" other's cal data and boot loader.
what file under which of 8 options?