Mine is "U-Boot 1.1.4 (Sep 26 2011 - 11:13:45)" from a TL-WR703N v1.6 => no problem

Same for me. Serial port not working.  I flashed and bricked my 703n. The sticker say 1.6. PCB say V1.1.
In the Chineese GUI it say :
3.14.4 Build 120925 Rel.33144n
WR703N v1 00000000

Soldered a serial port . And get the same result as 5. below. Only garbarge on the seriall port. I have soldered working serial ports with a microscope before.

I think that it is a good idea to:
A. have the possibility to connect a USB seriall built in to the firmware.
B. Enable WiFi as default. With some measures to activate it . Ie. It only activates automativaly if You plug something in to the USB port. Like memory stick, USB-seriall or a bluetooth dongle, what ever.

The serial console is working at 115200 bps, 8 bits, no parity, 1 stop bit, no hardware/software flow control, but I bet you already checked that

Be carefull too, the TL-WR703N's AR9331 SoC GPIOs are 2.7V only, NOT 3.3V, and this of course includes the UART signals. I have seen some adapters (including FTDI's...) that don't work at these low voltages and require a pull-up resistor between +3.3V and TX (TP_OUT) to work, can you try that?

I never had problems with cheap Nokia CA42-clone Prolific chip-based cables, though.

As for your suggestions:

• A: no, it doesn't work that way: the TL-WR703N's USB port is a host port, meant to connect to USB devices. The "USB serial" you describe converts a (TTL or LVTTL-level) UART to an USB device interface, so it can't be used for this purpose

• B: I totally agree with you: I proposed to activate WiFi only during initial setup or when reverting to it, and using the last MAC address digit written on the device label to scramble the SSID, but not everybody seems to understand the interest of this feature

Thanks for the tip!!!

It was to low voltage to the TTL rs232 converter!!!
Now it is working again.

Squonk did you manage to build sone images with the "magic line" in mach file?? I had too little time and i had to distclean due to build errors :-(
btw i had a working image, just add that line and nothing nore.

I did not post it due to revision different from images in downloads, so unuseful to install kmods .

No, I had to do a forced upgrade of the Flash chip, now 8MB

But I burned my hand on Sunday doing some cooking, and it is pretty difficult for me to type... And of course I can't unsolder the Flash chip if I brick, so I don't want to take the risk

Please call me to discuss all the details!

Flash fire while frying chips? (chips = British for "fries").
Sorry Squonk, couldn't resist! Hope your hand gets better.

Even more hilarious when you'll know that I am French

bwahahaha!
Regards

All guys,have fun with the little toy wr703n,it's really cheap and sex,every one should buy more than one and try to brick it
I have more than five wr703n and often use them to build my test network,it's really fun.

I upgraded my shiny new TL-WR703N a week ago and managed to kill the Ethernet. Came back to look at it today and noticed the new warnings on the website. Turns out to be exactly my problem. U-Boot reports following:
    root@OpenWrt:/# grep -a U-Boot /dev/mtd0ro | cut -d'I' -f1
    U-Boot 1.1.4 (Sep 25 2012 - 09:05:04)

I have soldered in a serial port and used the recovery procedures to get back to original firmware. Ethernet is now working again with original firmware.

I am keen to help test new firmware for this device. Anyone have an RC release they want some testing done on?

i have noticed that in this router version the ethernet port 192.168.1.1 on its original firmware is not pingable, once i connect to its wifi, the ping reply...
i think it initialize the ethernet port after a wireless client connects! weird...
anyone else noticed the same?

(Last edited by xbaha on 19 Dec 2012, 01:53)

No, in stock fw i could connect with both.. Restart your pc usually solves it xD

Denno you can try to flash wr740nv4 openwrt firmware but i already know the answer ;-)

(Last edited by nebbia88 on 19 Dec 2012, 06:43)

The Warning is bad, on the case it tells you it is version 1.6. So I flashed and get bricked......

The label to check for accurate version number requires to open the plastic lid: it is located inside, on the Ethernet RJ45 jack.

The external label on the plastic case may not give you the correct version, thanks to TP-Link

I will update the wiki warning.

version 1.6 is confirmed working:
v1.6     March 2012     Trunk (r30753)     Confirmed working
1.7 is currently unsupported.
What did you have, and what did you flash @tonbor?

There is a confusion because TP-Link puts 2 stickers:

• external sticker on the case bottom

• internal sticker on the Ethernet jack

The external sticker may report falsely "v1.6", while the internal sticker reports "v1.7"

I changed the wiki to prevent accidents until this issue is fixed.

(Last edited by Squonk on 21 Dec 2012, 15:40)

I got a brand new 703N today. It tells on the case it is version 1.6. So I updated with help with the chinese interface to openwrt-ar71xx-generic-tl-wr703n-v1-squashfs-factory.bin. No way with telnet to access the WR703N any more.....

Can you open the case by removing the blue lid and check what is written on the sticker on the Ethernet jack inside?

(Last edited by Squonk on 21 Dec 2012, 16:38)

Hi,

I received my 703N yesterday! As the version on the case 1.6 i tried to flash it with openwrt via chinese web interface. bad luck, it's bricked...
I opened the case, on the Ethernet socket says:

TL-WR703N 1.6
128142

Cant connect via ethernet or wifi!

I wonder if it's possible to flash the original image over serial with a raspberry PI?

Why do you want to use an RPi? You need to solder a serial console to access the bootloader. From there, you can restore the original firmware if you want.

But please, let us know what is the displayed bootloader version.

razvanesq80--you did try to telnet in at 192.168.1.1?

well, i think i need some USB to serial adapter, but i don't have it.
it's my first time doing something like this, don't really know how to use a serial console.

i got the router to use it as a NAS with an usb hard drive!

Warning is bad? IMHO you cannot read english.

i quote the old wiki:

Please tell me exactly in what sentence you read that:
a) 1.6 was safe to flash.
b) 1.7 was not.

Thanks.

nebbia88: it is at the top of the page showing what versions are confirmed working or not:
Version/Model     Launch Date     OpenWrt Version Supported     Model Specific Notes
v1.0     August 2011     Trunk (r28294)    Confirmed working
v1.2         Trunk (r29330)     Confirmed working
v1.3         Trunk (29283)    Confirmed working
v1.5     December 2011     Trunk    Confirmed working
v1.6     March 2012     Trunk (r30753)     Confirmed working
v1.7     December 2012    None     Ethernet not working