(A little back story)
I was modifying my Fonera for SD card, it booted and displayed the message

"mmc : card in op mode"

I was perusing the forums, and other things to find clues as to why it hard locked there, and then I read that I'm supposed to remove the capacitors and pull-down resistors - actually when I first saw the board and the instructions on the SD card mod, I wondered what those would do to the signal.

I removed the 4 caps on the top - at first, and then tested - nothing ... I then removed the 4 resistors on the bottom (by sw1) and now the device no longer boots - I don't even get Redboot, I've been working with it over the serial console, Linux networking is totally disabled ATM - I did configure redboot to allow telnet - but I've tried that to no avail.

I've done lots of mods wrt's xbox's etc - So I have extensive experience with small stuff, I just can't fathom what went wrong. As far as I can tell all I did was touch it with a soldering iron (obviously my first mistake ) but I swear I can't find and physical damage,  next to ESD blowing out the ram - I'm lost.

Any takers?

-Prozacgod

You must have inadvertently removed a wrong resistor, or damaged the board with ESD. All those resistors do is pull up the signals to Vcc, which is recommended for inputs or bidirectionals to prevent them from floating when nothing is attached. I would check the board carefully, and make sure you didn't get a solder blob somewhere. Also, a direct short across the resistor pad could cause trouble (though it shouldn't cause a boot failure?)

As an aside, I'm not sure why everyone is recommending removing the pullup resistors, since, unlike the caps,  they don't harm anything. You just have to know that they are there when working with GPIO inputs. In fact, since SPI devices DON'T drive their SDOUT pins when not selected, you actually *NEED* a pull-up/down resistor to keep the wire from floating.

Note: Removing the capacitors is necessary, as they will effectively limit the signaling rate.