NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.
Forum Discussion
LokeYourC3PH
Sep 18, 2022Tutor
R7900P/R8000P CFE & firmware.bin & JTAG
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 consol...
michaelkenward
Sep 18, 2022Guru - Experienced User
Anything available for these routers will show up in their support pages.
Support | NETGEAR
That 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.
LokeYourC3PH
Sep 18, 2022Tutor
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.
- michaelkenwardSep 18, 2022Guru - Experienced User
LokeYourC3PH wrote:
Again, this is the OFFICIAL NETGEAR forum, for NETGEAR hardware.
Not really.
This is essentially a user-to-user forum, with some input from a small band of Netgear support people.
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.
The Netgear team may not have the details you want nor are they in a position to dig deeper.
- LokeYourC3PHSep 18, 2022Tutor
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.
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.
- FURRYe38Sep 18, 2022Guru - Experienced User
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.
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.
Only other suggestion would be to try the TFTP method and see if the router will take a FW load here.
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.