Bricked Archer C5 (3 antenna model) Router

Can anyone help me unbrick my router? what happened was that I flashed the firmware from the tp-link website to my archer c5 that contained the bootloader, which I’m pretty sure is what bricked the router.

I was able to find the file that the router was requesting ArcherC5v1_tp_recovery.bin. I have tried copying different firmwares to the router with the bootloader cut out and then trying to log in to the router but nothing seems to work. I receive no interface screen when attempting to login. Not sure what else to do or how to solve this..

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thank you in advance for your replies.

Do you have the means to monitor the serial interface of the router while it is booting up? Perhaps posting the bootlog here might help in determining the appropriate steps.

I have the  Armorview PL2303HX though I don't know how useful it will be since I believe it is a bootloader problem.

If the bootloader is at least somehow operational, then you can monitor its messages and status over the TTL UART line. Perhaps these messages will give you clues on where things go wrong? The UART interface usually starts outputting data immediately when power is turned on in the router.

If the bootloader is entirely in shambles, then you might have a few tricks up the sleeve to try. One thing is to find the datasheet of your SoC (or more precisely, the CPU of your SoC) and determine if it supports booting from alternate boot sources in addition to the non-volatile flash memory. Some CPUs, for example, can be configured to boot over the UART connection, and this would allow you to download a working bootlader to the memory so you can overwite the broken one.

If that is not possible, then you can always de-solder the flash chip and use an external programming tool to write the bootloader bits to a suitable location on the chip, so that the CPU can find it when it comes out of reset.

Neither of the latter two are for the faint of heart. Compiling a RAM image bootloader for a foreign CPU architecture is borderline black magic