BTW did the #5 test on the uncut wire by shorting RX & TX with a knife and it works - too bad that Nokia connector end has so damn short pins!

I un-bricked  it finally !!!

Here's some details of how I did it:

* I used a no-name clone DKU-5 cable (got the wire info by uncovering the USB connector part and reading from the board). By doing this I damaged the plug, but a second cable worked (now knowing the colors I left the USB/UART part alone)

* this was a total solder-less solution, I ended up hacking a PC power-supply connector (a 5V i think) in which I inserted some pins and connected it to the DKU-5 cable with some alligator wires. I had to keep it pressed to the router pins with my hand until it booted and got a prompt

here's a pic:

* using the 10K resistor was useless: got garbage as output every time. So the final solution was direct wiring: GND<->GND, Router TX<->Cable RX, Router RX<->Cable TX, VCC left unconnected
IMHO the alligator clips and wires provided enough resistance.

* On Windows 7 I got blue screen - something about USB driver - I think the proprietary DKU-5 cable drivers I got were to blame. It worked without problems in Windows XP

So happy! Thanks everyone!

great to hear this!

your "theory" about wires resistance is nonsense, because the resistor should be applied between TX and VCC (router side, not serial cable side..), if you do not put that, there is INFINITE resistance between TX and VCC

anyway, good news that your HW version or cable model do not need resistor to work

(Last edited by nebbia88 on 25 Mar 2012, 20:16)

@nebbia88 right silly me - I left VCC unconnected but I failed to see the meaning

BTW I bricked it again just now by installing too many packages - I got a minimal 600k free space - and I unbricked immediately using the same setup

lol, you just have to use failsafe for that, no need to use serial console!

I'm running a build without support for failsafe - life is better when lived on the edge

why?

I'm running the default precompiled image I found on my router's OpenWRT page - r29592 Backfire. It was extremely easy to get it running, but has this caveat of unimplemented failsafe...

For next time, soldering is not that difficult.

@IVYHOBBY are you by any chance a bot?

i see a LITTLE contradiction here XD

think of it as a combination of edginess and laziness

(Last edited by valentingalea on 2 Apr 2012, 20:02)

nokia CA 53 works as well?

no