RT-AC68R failed reset. Maybe Bricked?

[rabidturtles359]

Hello all, thanks for you advice in advance!

Long Story:
I added an ethernet port to my detached garage so i could drop another access point out there for various devices that have trouble staying connected to my RT AC5300 in my house. Among the old wireless routers i have available, a RT-AC68R is one of them. I thought I would try out the Asus AiMesh and see how that would work. Now this router has had a rough life. My house got struck by lightning and it took out several electronics. My modem and switch was destroyed. Home theater receiver lost its video output. Tv lost an hdmi port. And the two routers i had running at the time lost both of their WAN ports. One being the AC68, the other being a linksys wrt 1900AC. Being an EE, i took it to work and started tearing them apart. Learned some things and figured i would try to replace the ethernet port isolation transformer. Some good bit of research later, i was able to get some test samples from the manufacturer that i could use as a replacement. The linksys came back to life and is still putting in work to this day. The AC68's WAN port did not come back. Eventually i found out that i could use a LAN port as a WAN port, neat! I had that running for a while and eventually got replaced. So, i dusted off the router and accessed the GUI. Looked around for a bit and didnt see anything about AiMesh in the settings. I let it sit overnight, and when i tried to access the router again, my computer could not find it. Easiest thing for me was just to reset it (thinking i might have changed a setting before i went to bed). So i held in the reset button for 10-15 seconds... nothing. It never booted. See the Short Story from here on out, thanks for reading.

Short Story:
I reset my router by holding the reset button for 10-15 seconds and it never booted after. LAN 4,3,2 LEDs are bright and always on. LAN 1 and internet LEDs are dim and always on. No other LEDs ever do anything. I tried a 30-30-30 reset. I tried NVRAM reset by holding WPS and plugging in, then hold the button for 30 seconds. The router does not broadcast any wifi. The router is not doing anything on the LAN ports. Asus discovery finds nothing.

So if anyone has any troubleshooting tips, please let me know. I'm not scared to crack this guy open either.

Thanks for your time,
Kyle

 

[rabidturtles359]

Can someone please help me? Thank you.

 

[Tech9]

It's nearly impossible to diagnose hardware problem solely based on description, unless the problem is very common and with very distinctive symptoms. I do electronics repairs, but I can't tell what's wrong without opening the device. The difference in LED brightness doesn't say much in this case, it's use related. Asus used short life LEDs in AC68U routers, perhaps LAN ports 2-3-4 were never/lightly used before. I did LEDs restoration on similar router recently and the original Power, 2.4GHz, 5GHz, WAN and LAN1 LEDs were literally discolored/burned. Repairing this router doesn't make much sense, if you have to pay for it.

 

[rabidturtles359]

It's nearly impossible to diagnose hardware problem solely based on description, unless the problem is very common and with very distinctive symptoms. I do electronics repairs, but I can't tell what's wrong without opening the device. The difference in LED brightness doesn't say much in this case, it's use related. Asus used short life LEDs in AC68U routers, perhaps LAN ports 2-3-4 were never/lightly used before. I did LEDs restoration on similar router recently and the original Power, 2.4GHz, 5GHz, WAN and LAN1 LEDs were literally discolored/burned. Repairing this router doesn't make much sense, if you have to pay for it.

Thank you for your reply and information.

So the suddenness of my failure leads me to believe I did something wrong resetting the device or something simple. I was hoping it wasn't a coincidental hardware failure.

Either way, I was hoping some people would have some additional troubleshooting steps I didn't try, even if it involved opening the device and probing around.

Thanks
Kyle

 

[Hazel]

I tried a 30-30-30 reset.

That's useless on an Asus router.

Reading the impact on your other electronics, I think your router is fried.

 

[L&LD]

How far along with the suggestions in the link below can you get? If anywhere?

If nothing works, it's almost assuredly hardware issues.

Fully Reset Router and Network

[Wireless] ASUS router Hard Factory Reset | Official Support | ASUS Global