my Samknows wrn3500L is kind of stucked with Netgear firmware for Samknows.
After it was retired, I flashed it to the original dd-wrt version and did not use it that much.
After a few years, I tried to use it for the 2.4G iot device, and it flashes yellow power LED. I know the firmware was corrupt and I simply uploaded a later version of dd-wrt. After 30-30-30, upgraded it to the big version and I found out the LAN/WAN port didn't work any more. The wireless seemed still working
So opened the router, connected the serial cable, ^c at boot, then run tftpd, tftped firmware (dd-wrt, netgear firmware, netgear firmware modded for samknows) to the router, found out:
1 Some firmware won't be flashed to the router. Even it is flashed, the WAN/lan part seems not working.
2 Netgear firmware modded for samknows can be flashed via tftp and the router seems to work. But I can not change the firmware from the router's web interface to dd-wrt. Just stuck there.
3 Found some wrn3500L cfe / nvram on the web, I changed the mac, etc and tried to flash the modified file it to the wrn3500L samknows, failed. Can not erase flash.
Any way to turn the retired samknows wrn3500L to a "normal" wrn3500L ? The "normal" version should be easier to handle.
Just want to add some update:
0 I connected the serial port, boot then ^c, go to cfe console, run tftpd to enable tftp.
1 I downloaded the old versions samknows firmware, tried to tftp to it and it just read, no flash occured.
2 Openwrt solved the problem. I tftped openwrt-22.03.3-bcm47xx-mips74k-netgear_wnr3500l-v1-na-squashfs.chk to it and it flashed. It worked. WAN/LAN/Wireless all seems work.