I recently added a "new" wl500gp to my collection but in setting it up and wanting to do it nicely this time around I accidently bricked it. This is not the first time this happened to me but this time around I think I have managed to really really really brick the unit. Please see below on what I did. I would welcome any suggestions that might help resolve the issue. For now I am simply left with an unmanaged 5 port switch.

What I did/tried:
The router contained some very old tomato version and a shitload of nvram variables. Thus i started with clearing the nvram manually: "nvram unset useless_var" etc and "mtd erase nvram" and "mtd erase linux -r". So my cleaning was a bit too drastic as I also accidently cleaned some vars that shouldn't be cleaned from nvram: "sdram_init" and "sdram_ncdl".... OK this can happen and I had this problem before. At this point there is no programmatic accecss to recovery mode anymore. The only way to resolve is to do a short on PIN9. I performed the short on PIN9 but remembered there was something with re-enabling the full 32MB of memory after shorting.... As soon as I got up and running again I modified "sdram_init" value from a respectable "0x0419" to the what I thought more correct value "0x0009". Boy was I mistaken. This again left my router bricked... Stupid, don't fix what ain't broken. I should have stopped when I got recovery mode working again. Now I again tried the PIN9 method but the router stays very dead. No way of getting any live in the power led again. I cannot get it to flash anymore. In other words I cannot restore by any means.  I also tried the more dubious PIN16 method (as PIN9 this should mess up the CRC so to put the router in recovery mode) but recovery mode stays dead. At this point I am thus left with a wl500gp passive ethernet switch. Have I truly fried it this time around?

Any suggestions on how to recover this baby without serial/jtag cable?

Anyone nearby with a serial cable set for this puppy I can borrow?

(Last edited by 500gx on 7 Oct 2011, 14:35)