Step 6: Modify the USB-TTL Cable for Use with WNR3500L

Take a look at the photo above.  See how each of the leads is covered by a small plastic tab?  Bust out your tiny screwdriver or whatever it is that you have that's tiny, and pry off the tabs on the black, yellow, and orange leads only.  If you choose to remove all six, you will need to wrap up the unused leads in electrical tape to avoid shorting anything out.  I just left the unused leads inside the plastic harness as shown above.  Once you pry the tabs off, the leads that you will use slip out easily. Now, you can plug the cable in.

Step 7: Find Out What COM Port Your Cable is Using

You installed the cable driver in step 3, right?  If so, head on over to Control Panel => System => Hardware => Device Manager, and click on the "Ports" item as shown in the photo above.  Note the "USB Serial Port" item with a designation of "COM3."  You'll use this information in the next steps. If you don't see that, plug in the cable and the Device Manager should refresh.

Step 8: Connect the USB-TTL Cable to the WNR3500L

Note: Make sure the router is still powered off and unplugged from power when you do this.  Don't touch anything metal either, don't want to take any risks of shock or shorting anything out, which is always a potential concern when tinkering with open electronics.

This part is particularly important, as if you don't connect these cables properly it will be very frustrating for you!   Take a close look at the photo above.  On the pinout on the board, you will see six pins.  Next to one pin it will read "JP1."  That is actually Pin 6.  Pin 1 is labeled with a "1" next to it.  Connect the cables as follows and as shown in the photo:

Black => Pin 6 (next to JP1)

Yellow => Pin 5

Orange => Pin 2

Note: In this photo, the black and yellow leads are seated properly.  I wanted to show you what an improper cable seating looked like; the orange cable is NOT seated properly.  Make sure all the cables are firmly seated to the pins and that they are not touching each other.

Step 9: Configure and Launch PuTTY

Hanging in there?  Do you feel like a geek yet?  It should feel good :)

Fire up PuTTY and you'll see the screen above.  Select the exact options as shown above; click on the Serial radio button, the port to COM3 (or whatever port was revealed in Step 7) and the speed to 115200.

Then, click on the very last item in the menu and choose the options above.  They must be exact: serial line of COM3, speed of 115200, Data bits of 8, Stop bits of 1, and "None" for both parity and flow control.  Once you are confident these settings are correct, click "Open," and you will see a blank window with a green cursor.  Nothing is supposed to be happening in there yet, so don't fret.

Step 9: Power on the WNR3500L and Press Ctrl-C

Now, you can finally connect power to the router.  Press in the power button and immediately press Ctrl-C on your PC, with the PuTTY window active.  This will bring you to what is called the CFE console; essentially, you're interacting directly with the board.  If this does not happen, double and triple check all of the previous steps.

Then, type in "tftpd" (without quotes) to bring up what is called the TFTP interface.  This will ready the router for programming.  If this step performed properly, you'll be left with the screen above.  Almost there...

Step 10: "Put" The Firmware Into Your WNR3500L In The DOS Prompt

Note: If you are on Windows 2000, XP, or 7, you have a TFTP client built in.  However, if you're on Win95, 98, Me, NT, or Vista - you do not.  

Instructions for installing TFTP on Windows Vista can be found here.

Here is one open source TFTP client for Windows that you can try.

Assuming that you have TFTP installed in some form, zoom on over to your DOS prompt. You copied the original NETGEAR fimware to your C: drive, correct?  Good.  Type "cd.." without quotes as shown above to get to your root directory, then type this command:

tftp -i 192.168.1.1 put FIRMWARE_FILE.chk

When you do this, the TFTP command will send the firmware file you indicated to the router, and you will get a confirmation as shown above.  If this doesn't work, make sure your router is connected to your PC properly, you have a static IP that doesn't end in 1, and that you can ping the router.

If this command is successful, your PuTTY console will start to get some action, and it will re-program the router.  Allow this process to finish, it will take several minutes, and wait until it is COMPLETELY finished or you will get a bad flash.  And nobody wants a bad flash!  You'll get a lot more text than is displayed above, but when it's done, you can try accessing your router's GUI via http://192.168.1.1. You will need to enter the "standard" username and password, consult your user manual for this information. (At the time of this writing, "admin" and "password" were used.)

Step 11: Rejoice and Relax... or troubleshoot

Hopefully, not the latter, but unfortunately things don't always go as planned.  If you're struggling with this procedure, have an unsolvable problem with your WNR3500L, or are on another OS let us know.  We're continuing to work on recovery guides for Linux and Mac OS X, so stay tuned!

You can post your questions on the public forums or as a comment below!

Quick Links

• WNR3500L Review
• WNR3500L Original Firmware
• WNR3500L Open Source Guide
• [Purchase a NETGEAR WNR3500L]
  
  

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