February 2, 2012 10:31 PM updated: February 2, 2012 10:34 PM

I have now spent the better part of two nights working on this.
I have a USB to serial cable hooked up and working, and using Putty I have been able to get a better idea of what's happening.
At present, when I boot up the router my console output is:

Decompressing..........done
Decompressing..........done


CFE for WNR3500L version: v1.0.36
Build Date: Tue Aug 11 15:09:14 CST 2009
Init Arena
Init Devs.
Boot partition size = 262144(0x40000)
Found a 8MB ST compatible serial flash
et0: Broadcom BCM47XX 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet Controller 5.10.56.28
CPU type 0x19740: 453MHz
Tot mem: 65536 KBytes

Device eth0: hwaddr E0-91-F5-67-46-72, ipaddr 192.168.1.1, mask 255.255.255.0
gateway not set, nameserver not set
Checksum mismatch:
Image chksum: 0x04721EDB
Calc chksum: 0xF06DEB34
Boot program checksum is invalid
Start TFTP server
Reading ::

It is correctly reporting that tftpd starts up and is listening away on 192.168.1.1. And at this point I've got a blinking green power light. I have tried sending the following firmware files via tftp:
Stock NetGear WNR3500L-V1.0.0.74_12.0.64NA.chk
Stock NetGear WNR3500L-V1.0.0.88_13.0.76NA.chk
Stock NetGear WNR3500L-V1.0.2.50_31.1.25NA.chk
Stock NetGear WNR3500L-V1.2.2.30_34.0.37NA.chk
DDR-WRT starter dd-wrt.v24-13309_NEWD-2_K2.6_mini-WNR3500L.chk

I have tried using the built-in tftp command line client in Windows 7 and tftp32.

In all cases, my command appears to successfully send the file over. On client side I get "transfer successful".
I am using the -i switch to ensure binary mode when sending via the Windows command line client.
On my serial console, I get:

Start TFTP server
Reading :: Done. 5439546 bytes read
Programming...

And then it sits there. I have actually allowed it to sit for hours on end, but nothing else happens.
I have tried clearing nvram via the reset button on the back.

Nothing has resolved this issue.
I figured having a direct console readout from the board would help me, and I suppose it has helped me identify the error it gives, which I then posted as the title of this thread.

I couldn't get the console output when I originally posted this cuz I was at work and too busy to VNC home, sorry.

February 7, 2012 9:58 AM

Too late for that, my man. Talked to the people on the DD-WRT forum about this and did extensive research / troubleshooting. (see here http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=666958#666958 ) It looks like this router needs to be JTAGed, and I am honestly unwilling to invest any more of my scarce time into troubleshooting / fixing something like this. I got myself a nice Asus router, it took literally 5 minutes to get Tomato USB / VPN up and running. I booted it into recovery mode, and a recovery utility, and flashed my desired firmware onto it. I should point out my experiences with Linksys in the past have been similar.
Only with Netgear have I had so many troubles, which is ironic since you're the only company I am aware of that has a website all about how "open" your routers are...
You can find my WNR3500L on eBay soon enough :)