Hi!
I'm a little bit confused why the manuals here only talk about USB-to-serial-Cable to get the firmware flashed.
I have a free COM-Port on my Laptop. I found out the pinout of a DB9-connector and built my own serial-interface cable. There are only RX, TX and GND important.
I connected it to the appropriate pins (the pins were not there,I had to solder it into the router), but when i connect with a terminal it get only jam. Ctrl-C does also not prevent the router from booting.
When i do a 30/30/30 reset i get a ping-anwser for a few seconds. I tried to put the firmware with tftp -i 192.168.1.1 put firmware.chk in this period, but had no success.
My question now is: Is it possible to do this with a serial-cable and who did it successful?
In short: Your Netgear wants 3.3v and your com port outputs considerably higher voltage. Do NOT use the com port on your laptop.
Oh, I tried it..... but my router survived :-)
Therefore the information in the serial console(putty) was rubbish!
Thank you.