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Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Fixing a dead Asus WL-500g

A short story with a happy ending: my Asus WL-500g locked up and it wasn’t starting, even after I hard-reset it (removed the power and plugged it back in). All the LEDs were constantly on (normally, when you plug in the power, they should light up for a second or so and the turn off). After some searching I found a page on FixYa which pointed me to the following forum thread: Dead or brick ? Lan and WAN 1-4 leds on steady. There were a couple of stories here with identical symptoms, so I decided to give the solution a try.

The tricky part was to find a source which could deliver 2.5A at 5V (most of the ones I found peaked at 1.5A). Finally I found this one locally and it worked like a charm! (It seems the trick is to search for “switch power source”). Also, for extra safety, look carefully at the adapter when you get it to make sure that it conforms to the specification (5V DC / 2.5A) and if possible, use a multimeter to ensure that the polarization is correct (in my case it was + on the inside, – on the outside).

PS. I didn’t get to disassemble my old source yet, but I will post photos whenever I do so.

3 comments:

  1. I have an Asus WL-500gP v2 and I want to flash it with OpenWRT. Have you tried flashing your device with some kind of linux for routers?

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  2. Yeap, I use OpenWRT. Hope to have some more time to play around with it this year :-)

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  3. Anonymous10:16 PM

    Mě se router pořád restartoval, dokonce Cílový hostitel nebyl dostupný.
    Pomohlo: 6V +
    1. Disconnect the router from UTP cables (not the power cable).
    2. Push reset button for 30 secs.
    3. Without releasing reset button, disconnect power cord.
    4. Hold the reset button for another 30 secs.
    5. Replug the power cord.
    6. Still hold the reset button for another 30 secs.
    7. Release the reset button and give the router about 10 secs to resettle.
    8. Disconnect power cord for another 10 secs and then reconnect.
    9. All should be in default settings now.
    Viz info na dd-wrt.com
    10. Pak naskočilo AIR, konektory nefungovali, ale přes Wi-Fi už byl přístup. Po flashnutí vše naskočilo.

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