EDIT: Okay, mystery solved. Somehow the firmware on the router corrupted itself, not sure how or if this happened the exact moment he unplugged it the last time a few years ago...
I had to open it up, solder connectors to the board and get a serial connection up and running, then found out that the router ran into a Kernel Panic just after flashing the 1234 LAN and WAN LEDs. I flashed a trimmed down stock firmware onto the router via Serial and TFTP then and got it up and running again.

Heya,

a friend of mine gave me his old WR1043ND v1.10 router to play around with. I'm running 3 other OpenWRT Routers (v2 and v3) of the same family but I haven't seen something quite like this before...

Since I don't know how he configured it the last time (and neither does he anymore) I decided to fire up Failsafe mode, however the SYS LED on that thing doesn't flash like it should be. The only thing he knows for sure is that he indeed flashed OpenWRT onto this thing before he took it out of service.
When I connect power all LEDs light up for a split second, then turns on the LAN1/2/3/4 and WAN LEDs for a second, then it goes off for 2-3, then comes back on for 1 second and then off again. After that the LED which I have my computer connected to starts flashing like normal.

Question tho: How can I enter Failsafe mode? There is no SYS LED flashing (except for the split second which is no indication of anything) like I'm used to on my other OpenWRT routers from the same family.

Thanks for the help already!

(Last edited by EpicLPer on 3 Nov 2017, 18:19)