R7900P/R8000P CFE & firmware.bin & JTAG

Question

Hello there dear NETGEAR community. I had bought from a friend a dud/bricked R7900P (PCB ID: U12H359T00, same as the R8000P) that he had brought with him from the US. I had checked with serial console access what the problem is, and it seems that the CFE itself and the firmware are/seem to be missing(?). I would really appreciate if anyone could send me the CFE and firmware.bin for either the R7900P or R8000P (as they are identical), so that I may flash those, and if you have any instructions on how I may enter JTAG so that I can flash CFE then I would be forever in your debt, especially in terms of which cable I would need and where exactly to solder it tp get into JTAG.Oh and last but not least, this is the serial console output in case you're curious:----
BTRM
V1.6
CPU0
L1CD
MMUI
MMU7
DATA
ZBBS
MAIN
OTP?
OTPP
USBT
NAND
IMG?
IMGL
UHD?
UHDP
RLO?
RLOP
UBI?
UBIP
PASS
----
HELO
L1CD
MMUI
MMU8
CODE
ZBBS
MAIN
NAND
IMg?
FAIL&nbsp;I hope anyone's able to assist me, as I've always bought NETGEAR products for networking all my life, but getting them here in South Korea is very difficult and I want to fix this one as I think it's an awesome piece of hardware!Thanks a lot already!

LokeYourC3PH · Answer

Having worked in plenty of support myself, a lesson that many should learn is that: If you have no proper answer to the actual topic/question at hand, provide nothing and just admit you don't know. It'll make everyone's time better and not waste anyone's time. I wasn't being rude, I was just merely stating facts that the reply truly wasn't contributing anything to the actual question I asked.&nbsp;Anyways, on a whole different note, "community" or whatever, it is NETGEAR official. I've had plenty of help from TP-Link and ASUS back in the days, and what that sounds to me like right now is that NETGEAR doesn't truly want to support their customers with anything they really seek other than "buy new product". Which, quite frankly, if that is the type of reply I'll get from support (I opened a case) or from actual NETGEAR staff here on the community forum, will be my last NETGEAR product. I've been buying plenty NETGEAR over the years and been promoting it wherever I could, because I as a customer expect some help when I need it as well. As such, I am just hoping someone here can give me what I am seeking, as any other reply wouldn't help. I know what my issue is, and I know what the solution is, it is just that I myself do not have access to the files that NETGEAR staff has, or that some community members may have a backup of.

michaelkenward · Answer

Anything available for these routers will show up in their support pages.
&nbsp;
Support | NETGEARThat page will have any software, firmware and drivers for your device, if they exist.For exotic stuff, you might do better to check with one of the communities that support third part firmware. They will be much more familiar with ways of breaking into and working with the official firmware.
&nbsp;

LokeYourC3PH · Answer

They say the same in return and tell me to come to NETGEAR, because after all, this is where the hardware comes from. I can't stress enough that CFE and the firmware.bin isn't provided ANYWHERE for download, and as such I am asking if someone has them, on top of having the pinouts for JTAG and which cable to use. Your reply helped me in absolutely NO WAY with this issue, at all. I was wanting to see if either someone had a backup of their CFE and firmware.bin, or if they have Serial/JTAG access and could thus dump the files I seek, and if they could send me those files and tell me how they got JTAG access (as I already have serial access).

Again, this is the OFFICIAL NETGEAR forum, for NETGEAR hardware. You are telling me, that I am apparently better of on unofficial/third-party forums than the official NETGEAR forum because NETGEAR is incapable of providing such things (that btw, are under GPL and can be provided without issues) for their own hardware?

Honestly, I'd truly appreciate it if you just didn't give me that type of canned/automated reply, because I already know all that myself (and as you can see, I have serial console access, obviously telling you I am no ordinary/beginner user, if you would've read the post in its entirety). I've been on the DD-WRT and OpenWRT forums, and they tell me to come here to get support from the manufacturer themselves. Besides, more people are active here than on DD-WRT or OpenWRT for NETGEAR hardware (obviously), and engineers as well, so the chance of me actually getting what I am looking for from someone here who has the answer, is much higher.

michaelkenward · Answer

LokeYourC3PH&nbsp;wrote:
Again, this is the OFFICIAL NETGEAR forum, for NETGEAR hardware. 
&nbsp;

Not really.
&nbsp;
This is essentially a user-to-user forum, with some input from a small band of Netgear support people.
&nbsp;
You may not like the answers that you get, but I can assure you that being rude when someone offers a suggestion is not going to convince anyone else to offer different answers.
&nbsp;
The Netgear team may not have the details you want nor are they in a position to dig deeper.
&nbsp;

FURRYe38 · Answer

NG doesn't provide anything beyond the FW files that's posted on there download site. Anything beyond that needs official NG support or RMA that the unit would need to be returned to NG. I presume that the RMA is no longer an option as it's probably way out of warranty and is a hand me down. NG doesn't offer a repair service either. I wish they would but it's there show.&nbsp;
&nbsp;
I know that the DD-WRT forums has had users post JTAG informations on some MFrs routers before. You might check there as they support some NG routers.
&nbsp;
Only other suggestion would be to try the TFTP method and see if the router will take a FW load&nbsp; here.&nbsp;
&nbsp;
Otherwise, if you can't get the unit running using normal or advanced means, then the unit should be deposed of and find something else.&nbsp;

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R7900P/R8000P CFE & firmware.bin & JTAG

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