Bricked GL-AR150 (ereased uboot)

Technical Support for Routers
21

Worse case you can do it yourself, just fill a file with null bytes, then write to the areas like Alfie said, and then flash that.

1 Like
22

Just flash uboot and then boot into uboot console and flash everything else.

Check here about uboot commands etc.

You need to use tftp, erase and cp.b to write data.

23

Nice thinking john! So to get straight so I do not mess this up:
I get my backup.bin, remove the first 256KB fill that with the correct uboot and flash it to the eeprom?

24

How far have you gotten with it all? Have you flashed a new uboot to the eeprom yet using a programmer? If i understand the bootloader is at the start of the memory, so you can just flash it from 0 to uboot.bin size.

After that you can boot the router like Alfie wrote, and flash the firmware using uboot.

25

I have no knowledge of how flashrom works. Everytime when I wanted to flash the uboot.bin it was complaining that it was not 64MB big. So it was not allowing me to flash it. As far as I know now. There should be some “force” option but I did not had time to test it yet with the force flag or with the DD command to fill in the other bytes to make it 64MB.
I will report back when I have tried it

26

If the hardware flasher requires an image the exact size, then yeah. Copy the uboot file and add null bytes to the end of it with dd to make it the exact size needed.

1 Like
27

Just to add, here is a video of a guy doing a memory upgrade on his router, so he is using similar tools to what you are using to flash the ram:

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28

Luckly my german is okish haha that is a lot of clear information. But totally forgot about the ART. I have to flash the ART aswell if I read else where on here. How do I get the correct ART?

29

Just try the uboot only first and see if it works :slight_smile:

1 Like
30

Both of you thank you very much! Just had some free time and managed to flash the eeprom the right way. I managed to get uboot up and running and when flashing gl-ar150-3.0 (GL.iNet download center) it shows that it is doing something (blinking green+red) and after 1 min its solid green. But then nothing. No wifi no eth connection. Can this be because of that I have used a 128 MB flash chip?

31

AR150 doesn’t support 128MB flash. Only 16MB.

This could be the reason.

32

ah that is too bad. No way to mark only an active part ? Otherwise can you give a model replacement chip ?

33

You can choose GL-AR300M or GL-AR750S, both of them support 128MB nand.

34

He was asking about the memory chip model/part number :stuck_out_tongue:

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35

Yes exactly! So any help on that :slight_smile: ?
I just looked it up. The chip I have now is this one:
https://www.winbond.com/resource-files/w25q128fv_revhh1_100913_website1.pdf

This one was installed:
http://ihunuo.com/download/KH25L12835F.pdf

This looks like the same one just different manufacturer ?

36

I think 128 mean 16MB (128Mbit/8).

So it should be the correct capacity.
Can you get the full log from UART?

1 Like
37

Sorry for the super late reply, got a new job and only got time today :slight_smile: (and had to buy some extra stuff). The log is unreadable… I am on a iMac and with the CH341A baud speed is 115200. But this is what I get:

sudo cu -l /dev/cu.wchusbserial1420 -s 115200
Password:
Connected.
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Could this be that I maybe did not solder the eeprom corretly ?

38

If you solder incorrectly then it could burn very quickly.

Maybe just miss setting or maybe need to try a different usb-uart adapter.

1 Like
39

thanks for the quick reply! What will be the correct setting? I do not have a second uart adapter saidly :frowning: i have this uart adapter currently https://hsto.org/files/d03/09a/014/d0309a0146644845acab04718e2dfb13.JPG

40

You can try the adapter from us.

https://store.gl-inet.com/collections/other-products/products/gl-inet-tiny-usb-uart-adapter-cp2104