Hi guys, I'm in stuck with this strange problem about LAN on my fonera 2200.
Basically I can't ping it at all, neither to access to redboot.
With a serial cable I can see redboot normally work, expect for this error, related to eth0:

/home/alfa/Atheros_Beta5.0/linuxsrc/src/redboot_fon1/ecos/packages/devs/eth/mips
/ar531x/current/src/ae531xecos.c#415:ae531x_send eth0 Tx: cannot get txDesc

This problem appear suddenly, after months it was perfecly operational. It was however clocked to 200 Mhz that is generally considered a safe choice for a 2200.

I try everything on my own, changing mac and serial, powercycling, try to reflash redboot
partitions and configurations but with no luck. With a 2100's redboot my 2200 work well, but with the power led off, reply with this string: PHY ID is ffff:ffff
It is normal? Could be related to this problem?

I'll very appreciate any suggestions.

(Last edited by mazxim on 12 Feb 2009, 16:12)

strange problem.
also try flash the redbot with the original fw

http://www.vslinux.net/openwrt/redboot/ … _16Ram.bin
The redbot is specific to any device, if you put other then the orginal build in, you will have problems for sure.

all my foneras have cpu overclock, with no problems.

I did it. I flashed with that .bin with no results, I got same "cannot get txDesc" error. Since I cannot verify if the hardware is damaged (most unprobable) I suspect the problem could be related to a redboot misconfiguration. With a 2100 redboot I got PHY ID ffff:ffff string out as a message on redboot console. It is normal? It is so strange even because if I total erase and replace the redboot area I should have clean up somehow all misconfigurations. To reflash I just use the command "fis create RedBoot". Maybe could be better to try directly with the hex locations?

Thanks for reply.

To me the most probable is hardware damaged.

As i tel you, put a bot loader from other device as not the origin one, result in errors, do not try it, you may lose it, and the only recovery possible is by Jtag.

cat /proc/mtd
dev:    size   erasesize  name
mtd0: 00030000 00010000 "RedBoot"
mtd1: 006f0000 00010000 "rootfs"
mtd2: 000c0000 00010000 "vmlinux.bin.l7"
mtd3: 0000f000 00010000 "FIS directory"
mtd4: 00001000 00010000 "RedBoot config"
mtd5: 00010000 00010000 "boardconfig"

This is the fonera flash partitions.

Open the device and check is any is wrong, this devices do not was build it to have high loads at very long times, this devices are fragile.

I had this problem *before* start to playing with the redboot partition as I thought it was probally related to it. As I said, it worked well as a repeater with dd-wrt and beside it's concerned instablity, was fully responsive and safely located on a dry place. It sound weird to me that somehow was compromised *only* the lan part, I don't understand what you mean with "high loads" since the lan was however very less used compared to wifi part and was not powered for long period. I'm not sure but I suppose these parts are pretty much integrated on single chips, no? I never had the need to open the case but now (i'm defenitively unexpert in elettronic stuff) the board looks good. This obviously doesn't mean nothing.

Now I come back to original redboot partition but the 2100 one does it work well beside it's problem with the leds (on 2200 model). I don't know if they are interchangeble.

On a telnet session via wifi, trying to up the eth0 with ifconfig command, Ii simply don't up nothing.