AC68U (was TM-AC1900) won't accept 378.56, or anything

[jcarrra]

The problem is that some of these bricks (mine) resulted in no ability to get an admin page, miniCFE, telnet or putty prompt, or ping response. The router had no IP address to talk to.

 

[Engineer]

The problem is that some of these bricks (mine) resulted in no ability to get an admin page, miniCFE, telnet or putty prompt, or ping response. The router had no IP address to talk to.

I suspect that the firmware you tried had a CFE update inside and it somehow failed. Otherwise, if the CFE was intact, it should be recoverable. One of the great features of the Asus CFE system and it's ability to recover. All breaks down when the CFE is being updated and that update fails somehow.

So if you open a command prompt and set a ping:

ping -t 192.168.29.1 <enter> and you reboot the router (with or without holding the RESET button while rebooting), you never see a response to the command's ping (you'll need to set your IP manually to 192.168.29.2, sub 255.255.255.0 and gateway of 192.168.29.1 for this to work)?

 

[jcarrra]

I suspect that the firmware you tried had a CFE update inside and it somehow failed. Otherwise, if the CFE was intact, it should be recoverable. One of the great features of the Asus CFE system and it's ability to recover. All breaks down when the CFE is being updated and that update fails somehow.

So if you open a command prompt and set a ping:

ping -t 192.168.29.1 <enter> and you reboot the router (with or without holding the RESET button while rebooting), you never see a response to the command's ping (you'll need to set your IP manually to 192.168.29.2, sub 255.255.255.0 and gateway of 192.168.29.1 for this to work)?

It is resolved now that the 30-30-30 gave me access, which is said above does not work on ASUS, so who knows what did it.

But what you describe WAS the situation before 30-30-30 worked. No matter what I did with the things you can do with reset button, or WPS button, there were no pages delivered (because) there was no ping response to .29.1 or .1.1 (CFE had been changed previously to an ASUS 1.1 and had worked, so the CFE should have been answering 1.1. but is wasn't.

I tell you that;s a bad feeling when you have no wire access into the router. The only thing left is buttons or JTAG.

What I don't understand is why they don't build in a ROM (not RAM, EEPROM, or any flashable thing) a basic recovery code that is ALWAYS there.

 

[rogervm12]

For you guys that have bricked the router (or think so), can you try the following....

Tips for getting to mini-CFE webserver

• Power off the router using the power button
• Set your PC's IP to 192.168.29.2, subnet 255.255.255.0 and gateway 192.168.29.1 (assuming the recovery mode is 192.168.29.1)
• Navigate to 192.168.29.1 using your browser. Browser status will spin indicating looking for page
• Press and hold the reset button while powering on
• When the mini-CFE webpage appears on the browser, release the reset button
  
  The browser status must be spinning (looking for a webpage) for this to occur. This method seemed much easier than the hit and miss of trying to go into mini-CFE webserver blindly. If the above doesn't work, try changing your IP to 192.168.1.2 with subnet of 255.255.255.0 and gateway of 192.168.1.1 and then try the above procedure using 192.168.1.1 instead of 192.168.29.1. It's rare that a firmware will destroy a CFE (bootloader) but it's possible on some since they check and overwrite the CFE (which can be dangerous for Asus to be doing down that road IMO).

It works great!

IP: 192.168.1.2
Submask: 255.255.255.0
Gateway: 192.168.1.1

Connect it in #4 port ethernet.

Thank you so much!

 

[Engineer]

It works great!

IP: 192.168.1.2
Submask: 255.255.255.0
Gateway: 192.168.1.1

Connect it in #4 port ethernet.

Thank you so much!

Just to give credit, I didn't come up with this method, simply took what a good poster wrote and verified it worked and then added it to the guide. I'm very sorry that I don't remember who wrote it though (getting old). Great that it works though!!!