I'm attempting to recover a DG834v1 that fails to boot. It started exhibiting the flashing power/check LED symptom after being powered down and up again during a site relocation. Prior to the power down, it was working. I attempted to use the Netgear Recovery utility and it appeared to successfully go through the motions of flashing a new image, but on reboot, the same symptoms prevail. I have tried as many images for the DG834G as I can find on the net, but to no avail. I am assuming that the upload works because the version numbers reported by the upload tool differ.

As the standard year warranty had expired, I opened it up, found an unpopulated serial interface (JP603) and wired it to a MAX232 chip as per the instructions for the v2 of the same router on this and a few other sites. Booting the router with a PC connected and a terminal session at 115200 8N1 gives me the following sequence of events every time:

1. internet link led (i) comes on orange
2. power led comes on green and internet link turns off

3. The following comes out the serial interface:

ADAM2 Revision 0.18.01
(C) Copyright 1996-2003 Texas Instruments Inc. All Rights Reserved.
(C) Copyright 2003 Telogy Networks, Inc.
Usage: setmfreq [-d] [-s sys_freq, in MHz] [cpu_freq, in MHz]
Memory optimization Complete!
Download.
Copying download from b0017000 to b4020000

4. 5 seconds later, power and check leds flash alternatively green and orange respectively

This is the same for all versions of the firmware images I have tried. Trying to send keypresses has no effect.

Another note is that I have only ever loaded official Netgear images onto the router.

Anyone have any suggestions?