I read Mr. Redmer's excellent tutorial on debricking my 3500L and looked forward to the experience of connecting to my router.
Imagine my surprise when I opened it and found that there is no 6-pin header! The artwork and JP1 through-holes are there, however, I can't tell from the tutorial picture whether there should be anything installed next to where L7 is missing in the tutorial picture. L7 is missing on mine as well, but I can't see the tutorial picture well enough to tell whether there are components next to that location, or just solder. On my board, there are pads for a Q3 and a Q4, but no devices.
I don't see much point locating and installing a header until I know that everything else is there. Would anyone tell me whether there any components installed in the Q3 / Q4 location? Is there anything else I should look for? U38 is installed...
Also, the cover is definitely meant to slide off. Once it slides 1/4" it comes right up.
For what it's worth, my board reads "REV.0" in the area of SW1 and was apparently built in the 40th week of 2009.
James
Not sure what you are seeing. Maybe this pic of my soldered connects will help?
Perfect shot, thank you! That answers it for me. I'm going to solder a header to JP1 tomorrow and see what happens.
No prob, it's from an article that I will be posting soon.
Are you trying to do something specific with the router?
I bought it to set it up as a repeater for my daughter, and I haven't had much luck with that. I'm going to restore the original firmware just for the exercise, and I realize that I can do that without a TTL cable.
I'll keep playing with it until I get it to work. I just want to be ready when I finally brick it, and I thought that people should be warned that there may not be a header soldered to the PCB.
I soldered in the 6-pin header today, and everything works just fine. I set up the cable a bit differently, though. If you carefully pull up the end of the plastic keeper about 0.080" you can slide the wire lug out of the connector. I did that, folded back and heat-shrinked the ones I'm not using, and re-installed the three for serial communication. I'll try to post a picture in this message.
I'll look into the header issue a bit more. I was hoping that the header would be included on all models/versions of the WNR3500L - it makes it much easier to debrick/reflash. Not everyone (including me) wants to solder in a header :)