Hi there, I'm trying to debrick my TP-LINK WR1043ND.
I soldered a Serial2USB connector and connected via minicom.
That works... somehow.
The output I get in minicom is:

"
�

U-Boot 1.1.4 (Apr 28 2011 - 15:55:09)

AP83 (ar9100) U-boot 0.0.11
DRAM: 
sri
32 MB
"

...repeating until inifinity.
INCLUDING that special character at the beginning
What puzzles me is that every tutorial says, I should get something like "autobooting in 1 second" at the end. But theres nothing. After a second, though, the textblock is repeated.

I tried to enter "tpltpltpl" as well as "tpl"<enter>"tpl"<enter>"tpl"...
no result.

Any hints?

(Last edited by frnk on 3 Nov 2014, 22:23)

Ok, I'll answer this myself.

I did not plug in the 3.3V pin of my soldered serial socket.
As soon as i plugged in that pin, the output continued with:
"
id read 0x100000ff
flash size 8MB, sector count = 128
Flash:  8 MB
Using default environment

In:    serial
Out:   serial
Err:   serial
Net:   ag7100_enet_initialize...
No valid address in Flash. Using fixed address
: cfg1 0xf cfg2 0x7114
"

let's see, if that will get to a happy end.

unfortunately, thats all the new output i get.
every other tutorial says, it should continue with:
"
eth0: 00:03:7f:09:0b:ad
eth0 up
eth0
Autobooting in 1 seconds
"
but it just HANGS. no repetition any more, as soon as i dis- and reconnect that 3.3v pin...

I dont know what to do...

ok, another answer by myself.

I now plugged that pin not to 3.3v but to 5v. that made it going!!
it booted the bricked firmware, as I - surprised - missed the point to stop the boot process..

but after a reset I could do that, and continue with the whole reflash, tftp thing....

PROBLEM SOLVED!!

(At first, TFTP had maaany time outs, but that was some prblem with tftp service, .. i just wanted to mention)