Yep, I had seen that one and thought after seeing the hex head output decided on trying bs=32 instead of 84. Thanks! I was about to try 0xbf070000 instead.
BusyBox v1.19.4 (2013-06-04 17:25:04 EDT) built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.
_______ ________ __
| |.-----.-----.-----.| | | |.----.| |_
| - || _ | -__| || | | || _|| _|
|_______|| __|_____|__|__||________||__| |____|
|__| W I R E L E S S F R E E D O M
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BARRIER BREAKER (Bleeding Edge, r36848)
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* 1/2 oz Galliano Pour all ingredients into
* 4 oz cold Coffee an irish coffee mug filled
* 1 1/2 oz Dark Rum with crushed ice. Stir.
* 2 tsp. Creme de Cacao
-----------------------------------------------------
SUCCESS!! Serial recovery is finished!
So, to recap I:
1) soldered a serial console on the board and used an FTDI USB to TTL converter ( 3.3V ) to connect to it
[] O O O = RX - TX - GND - Vcc
Using sudo minicom -s or some other serial communications program, set up to 115200 baud, 8n1, hardware/software controls off, ttyUSB0 plug in router, watch boot up, hit key when prompted and from command prompt:
ar7240>
type printenv
You should see ipaddr=192.168.0.1 and serverip=192.168.0.100
Once you have ifconfig set up (step 5) and atftpd set up (step 6) tftpboot will do the rest from the router prompt.
2) used jay0lee's build here ( thank you btw ): https://googledrive.com/host/0B0YvUuHHn … -601b1.bin
3) converted the file to dir-601b1.trx (I am now guessing that the file is trimmed to the correct size for the flash space, therefore for this router it needs to be 390000 hex, or 3735522 bytes exactly.) and trimmed the header from the file as per here: https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php … 66#p189566
dd bs=84 skip=1 if=dir-601b1.bin of=dir-601b1.trx
4) connected an ethernet cable from a router lan port to laptop ( I used an ethernet to usb converter since my ethernet port is borked )
5) set up a static ip address for laptop ethernet which gels with the default address for u-boot ( ifconfig eth0 192.168.0.100 up )
6) from u-boot console ping 192.168.0.100 ( should say 'host 192.168.0.100 is alive' )
7) set up atftpd ( or some other ftp daemon ) on laptop, making the directory /tftpboot and place dir-601b1.trx in it
**********************************************************************
******* WARNING: I assume the next step can brick your router if used carelessly *******
******* The values of 0x80000000 and 0x9f070000 are always the same for this *******
******* router, but 0x390000 is file size in hex, be sure your file is the right size!! *******
**********************************************************************
8) used the following commands on the router's u-boot console to download dir-601b1.trx, erase the flash, burn image and reboot:
tftpboot 0x80000000 dir-601b1.trx
erase 0x9f070000 +0x390000
cp.b 0x80000000 0x9f070000 0x390000
bootm 0x9f070000
The value of 0x390000 is the hexadecimal value of the filesize in bytes.
That's it.
I think next I will try making and uploading images. What the heck, I know how to unbork it now...
PS I got the POS kindle working too! Ma loves it.
PPS I also have to say that I am quite noob at this and still managed to find all of the pertinent information in this and other threads on this forum. I for one am very grateful for all the work done by others to get me this far. Great job folks.
(Last edited by lobonse on 24 May 2014, 17:36)