I had to use the USB-to-serial console in order to interrupt the bootup sequence and manually pull the good firmware over tftp. YMMV!
New beta DD-WRT firmware on official site works too.
@paulmedynski: Thanks. Then I will wait to get my serial console cable before I try to flash LEDE.
@steel_rat: Thank you for the hint! I just flashed https://download1.dd-wrt.com/dd-wrtv2/downloads/betas/2017/12-29-2017-r34311/netgear-wnr3500lv2/dd-wrt.v24-34311_NEWD-2_K3.x_mega-WNR3500Lv2.chk and I can confirm that it works. By the way, do you know what's different compared to the smaller image https://download1.dd-wrt.com/dd-wrtv2/downloads/betas/2017/12-29-2017-r34311/broadcom_K3X/dd-wrt.v24-34311_NEWD-2_K3.x_mega-WNR3500Lv2.chk?
Altough the router is now useable with DD-WRT I would prefer to have LEDE running 
That question would perfectly fit in the dd-wrt forum 
Confirmed that with the latest snapshot image:
openwrt-brcm47xx-mips74k-netgear-wnr3500l-v2-squashfs.chk
DOES NOT BOOT after flashing, WNR3500L V2.
2018-02-27
So this device is still not working, but claimed to be supported device on the wiki.
Will there be a working OpenWRT image for the WNR3500L V2 ?
Just a quick how to run an openwrt kernel on wnr3500Lv2 with tftp (no breaktrough Nand driver still does not work):
1-Remove packages tftpd xinted and inetd (make sure you don't have any /usr/bin/inetd )
2-Do "fuser 69/udp"
3-Create a folder /srv/tftpd/
4-copy [your_openwrt_src_folder]/build_dir/target-mipsel_74kc_musl/linux-brcm47xx_mips74k/vmlinux-nodictionary.lzma as /srv/tftpd/vmlinuz
5-Install atftpd
6-Start "atftpd with command atftpd --daemon --bind-address 192.168.1.2 /srv/tftp/" make sure the process is running in "ps -aux".
7-Connect to your router's lan and take the IP 192.168.1.2
8-Reboot your router, it will automatically fetch the vmlinuz and boot on it.
It looks like the way support for Netgear WNR3500L v2 (and possibly other devices) was committed into OpenWrt never resulted in working images, this is what I am currently running with at the moment:
diff --git a/target/linux/bcm47xx/image/mips74k.mk b/target/linux/bcm47xx/image/mips74k.mk
index 53e7b53eba8b..7e65821a5589 100644
--- a/target/linux/bcm47xx/image/mips74k.mk
+++ b/target/linux/bcm47xx/image/mips74k.mk
@@ -460,6 +460,8 @@ define Device/netgear_wnr3500l-v2
$(Device/netgear)
NETGEAR_BOARD_ID := U12H172T00_NETGEAR
NETGEAR_REGION := 1
+ KERNEL_NAME = vmlinux-nodictionary.lzma
+ IMAGE/chk := append-rootfs | trx-without-loader | netgear-chk
endef
TARGET_DEVICES += netgear_wnr3500l-v2
I don't know whether other profiles are working, but they may require similar changes as well. I will be working on the NAND driver next.
It looks like CFE on these devices is very finicky and will not reliably load and decompress a kernel image greater than ~2.5MB.
Here is the pull request that adds support for the router:
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Have you had a chance to flash recent builds in the last month or two? I have a unit running DD WRT, and every time I try to flash an openwrt master build (since your changes haven't made it into 22.03), i get a brick and have to recover via tftp
- In the future, consider making a new thread rather than posting in a 6 year-old one
- Try reverting to OEM firmware first, then flash OpenWrt
This is the closest thing that this device has to a support thread, and the most recent post was by the dev who added support a year ago. It's not really a necro.
My original flash of the build was from oem, but when I recover the unit, I go to DD WRT to save myself a few steps from having a useful unit again. That said, ill try it starting fresh again when I have a moment.
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I just tested V21.02.5 V22.03.2 & snapshot
and they all just end in Starting program at 0x80001000
so none of them work atm
I'm surer there was a V23.03.3 yesterday but not today oh well
this device did have a version of v21 snapshot running on it
I think it was the original submission of the pull request
No surprise on release 21/22 as the patches never got merged into those branches, but ideally snapshot should contain it. May dig into it myself if @ffainelli isn't around to.
I see there are 23.05 images available. Are these working at all ? How is the state of wifi? I'm guessing it doesn't work due to bcm ?
I have not been able to work on the WNR3500L v2 since committing the patches into OpenWrt trunk, however switching from the 5.10 to the 5.15 kernel is basically what had it stop booting for me. Without having earlyprintk/JTAG on this device it might be a bit challenging to figure out why it stopped booting.