Tplink archer c50 v4 - dead?

[ian52]

hi to everyone,
i have a archer c50 (EU) v4.0 i'm trying to recover.
got it second hand and don't have history of what happened before, when i plugged it in - all leds were blinking.
so i TFTP-ed to it multiple firmwares:
tp-link original FW from tplink website
tp-link original FW stripped (no boot)
2 versions of pre-packed openwrt 19.07 (the ones bootable via tftp/gui)
2 version of sysupgrade openwrt 19.07.6

in ALL situations, the router accepts the firmware, restarts, and then the only the power led is on, all others are off and i have no network connectivity. simply put, it doesn't come online.

as a last resort i'd try to jtag it, not sure how?
or could be the router is really dead beyond saving?
thanks

[frollic]

Serial port?

[ian52]

on the wiki page it say: jtag:NO.
but while trying to find out what to do,i stumbled on this topic:

Restoring Stock Firmware for Archer C50 V4

It finally worked! I did it by doing all the steps using HxD editor and not doing any of them using Linux or dd commands. I selected then removed the first 0x200 bytes, inserted 0x30000 bytes at the beginning containing zeros, and selected then deleted 0x30000 bytes of FFs at the end of the file and flashed it using TFTP. Thanks for your advice on using this application, I hope we can install a stable version of OpenWRT on our devices soon! I have uploaded the edited stock file for the above …

and that firmware worked and i was able to restore it to be operational.
after all the troubles, i don't think i want to try again to run openwrt on it, although i need it.

[tmomas]

@ian52

on the wiki page it say: jtag:NO.

JTAG != serial

[ian52]

ok ... anyway i got it working so won't play with it anymore...
cheers

[ian52]

aaand after some fiddling and a nice big cup of coffee i managed to install openwrt on it, yeiii.
now i have already setup 5 wifi networks on it, 2 bridges, sqm. will see if it manifests the problems that are mentioned on the forum.
this cheap 15 eur device can do a lot, it even unlocks the usually non-available 5ghz channels.
so in short - i found online a factory.bin pre-prepared openwrt that i uploaded over gui (that firmware is not on openwrt download page), and then did a sysupgrade to the current image.
speeds are OK, range seems to be OK, will check in the next days if 2ghz wifi is able to arrive till the end of the yard.
5ghz inside the house is OK, covers the whole floor.