One thing I did notice while trying to flash v1.0 of the Trendnet firmware only port 1 (where my ethernet cable was plugged in) would light up. The power light never came on when V1.0 was being flashed. So I doubt the firmware was ever really being installed at all. In better news I did pick up a TP-Link AC4000 Mu-Mimo router yesterday. Wow this thing rocks! I might revisit the Trendnet when I feel like playing with it. Is there some type of protection setting in OpenWRT that might be keeping me from flashing v1.0? If there is I couldn't find it. Thanks again.
The recovery loaders, as depicted in your screenshots, is provided by the OEM bootloader of your router, this bootloader is never touched by OpenWrt.
Right. But any idea why I can not flash v1.0 of the Trendnet firmware? The only light that flashes when installing the old firmware is port 2 which is what I have my ethernet cable plugged into. I thought the power light was supposed to flash. This leads me to believe that nothing is being installed. Upon reboot of the router I get the Luci login screen every time. I have checked the v1.0 firmware .bin file and it checks out with no errors. My new router is working great. But I'd still like to reflash my Trendnet back to stock.
That's normal. uboot doesn't activate the power LED on this model.
Get a TTL serial adapter and plug it into the console. That's the only way you are going to get any debugging info from the device. You could also install firmware from uboot TFTP that way too.
There's no pin headers on this board, but the holes are there and you don't have to solder as long as your wires make contact.
There is probably just something dumb keeping the firmware from being written, like you have bad memory somewhere, or there is something different about your process that we are not considering.
I've gone back and forth between the OEM and OpenWRT firmware on my test unit many times.
I also had challenges getting back to stock firmware from OpenWRT 18.06.5. Eventually I found that you can't go back directly to latest Stock firmware, but you can flash older the older stock 1.00b11 firmware and then go to 1.03b02 there after.