I need help what cable do i need to connect the router to my PC via telnet?

I have israelian firmware which disable many 5Ghz and the firmware blocks me from installing official firmware and i need ass it seems hard upgrade

Thanks for anyone who can help me.

But why do you need serial? Is bricked now??
You tried to install openwrt?

Anyway is a usb to ttl 3.3V serial adapter.. Usually those with PL2303 chip works well..

Hi, no its not bricked.

The Firmware burned on it is tp-link specialy firmware for israel (blocks 5ghz channels as it not allowed by goverment here)

they did something so i can't install any official firmware (getting error)

i need a way to bypass this limitation...

see image below

When you get serial (just to be sure.. It should not be necesary..) you can try following this:

https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=36596

there is a chinese exe that can modify header and checksum.. Follow the advice in that topic, using 4300 firmware.. Basically you have to clone 2 fields of the header from an israel fw to the global one..

Note: totally untested!!!

(Last edited by nebbia88 on 14 Dec 2012, 06:30)

I couldn't find how this is helping me...

anyway i ordered from ebay usb to PL2303 ttl adapter.

there is any guide how do i connect it to the router ports?

and how later on i connect it to putty?

and one more question is can i install with the telnet official firmware or ony openWrt?

Thanks

With that exe you can modify english firmware header so it will be accepted by your router... I think...

For serial read wiki!

Hex*

Yea i read about it. but i don't have the israel firmeare so i can match between the headers...

can't you download it?

answer, no.. seems that on Israel site there is the usual global firmware -.-

(Last edited by nebbia88 on 14 Dec 2012, 15:40)

Nope.
this firmware for importer only dumb...

same problem here,
bought this WDR4300 with Israeli firmware.
can't get the Israeli firmware img anywhere (for the method mentioned above).
the company that support this product in israel doesn't help, further more, when I ask them
when they are going to release an update based on the latest official build they say "not in the near future".

is there anyway to force a flash of the official release,
I thought about something in the manner of flashing openWRT and then reverting to the official
or something like this ?

frustrated ... help :-( ...

Already got my ordered ebay serial port and got it official firmware...

oh no, did you made a backup????

it could be the only way to know the header of the Israeli firmware!

please say yes please say yes ...

hi, just got my usb to PL2303 ttl adapter, I am planing to install the original firmware on the device.
nebbia88, can you tell me how to do a backup to my current firmware so I can help other ppl that want to use the method mentioned above to install firmware ?

hey sorry for late answer.. did you have a working tftp server? i do not know if it's the same on all tp-link models, but on my 941 i can just:

tftp -p -l /dev/mtdblockN -r N 192.168.1.2

my pc has a tftp server on ip 1.2...

N from 0 to 4 are the usual partitions, we are interested in the first hundred of bytes of 1 partition!

BTW i discovered that you can do this also from this hidden cmdline in stock firmware:

https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php … 89#p181589

(Last edited by nebbia88 on 2 Feb 2013, 14:23)

just saw you answer,
unfortunately, too late ... I think I bricked my device :-(

well ... I've connected everything ...
pressed "tpl" when saw the "booting in 1 second" thingy
and got the console window ...
then I tried "tftpboot" (after using ip 192.168.1.100, opening tftp server and copying the file where it should be).
it started, and looked something like:

####T    ### T T #### T ### 
timeout tried exceeded, retry ...

I tried again and again ... nothing, always the same !
after that, I noticed that I can't power up my device unless the usb to ttl is connected (no sign off life !!).
if the usb to ttl is connected everything is working (of course I can't work like that since the device gut is wide open wires everywhere, its a mess).

didn't do what you wrote, nebbia, since I saw it just now ... but thanks anyway ...

any suggestions ?   I wanna cry.... :~-(

(Last edited by encephalon on 3 Feb 2013, 15:59)

Thanks to nebbia88,
I got the header of WDR4300 Israeli firmware.
see image below

I run
tftp -p -l /dev/mtdblock1 -r mtdblock1 192.168.0.100 (my tftp server  ip)

from
http://192.168.0.1/userRpmNatDebugRpm26 … dline.html
User:osteam
Password:5up

I got mtblock1 file  with 1024k size.
Then I parsed the header with the Chinese utility.

nebbia88, can you tell me how to do a full backup to my current firmware with 8064k size,
if I want to roll back to original Israeli firmware via official Web interface.

ale_sha... great !!!!!

you just saved me alot of trouble, I don't know if it will solve my bricked WDR4300 yet, but I will
sure try to upload the firmware using the header that you extracted.

if you are able to backup the Israeli firmware please share it, I will appricate it.

10x

ale_sha, can you patch this header on the generic factory firmware now?

Great!!

can you upload somewhere (dropbox?) mtdblock1 and mtdblock2?

anyway,
1) talked to nebbia.
2) I've connected the router, turned it on while it was connected to usb-serial.
3) went to the gui, tried to install official firmware using the 0x40-0x43 that ale_sha gave us ...

and .......... NO

it failed to load 10085 error, file is wrong version or something ... check file name ...

tried couple of time .. verified... nothing ....
and then .... I did a factory Reset using the web gui ...
and now the situation is even worse, I can't  get into the gui anymore. and it seems the router wont even boot since the DHCP doesn't even give me an ip and I get "can't reach destination" when pinging 192.168.0.1 ...

evil router ...

Here are mtdblock1.bin, mtdblock2.bin of Israeli WDR4300

Same here, I got "Error code: 18005 Upgrade unsuccessfully because the version of the upgraded file was incorrect. Please check the file name." when I tried to apply patched English firmware with Israeli header.

It seems to me the router parses a firmware file name. I unsuccessfully tried to change "en" sub-string with "il" or "he".

(Last edited by ale_sha on 4 Feb 2013, 00:04)

There could be possible plan B for us then...

I will try to look on the filesystem now using the userRpmNatDebugRpm26525557 menu trick,
probably there must be some localization reference that the original firmware uses to compare during the image upload proccess.

UPD:

Found it, it's in /web/oem/model.conf,

but since it's squashfs (read-only) file-system, it can't be modified.

Ideas?

(Last edited by flasher on 4 Feb 2013, 02:49)

could you provide the content of /web/oem/model.conf?

Here is model.conf
It is a binary file.