Posted on by Jay Lagare

Unbricking the Buffalo AirStation Nfiniti High Power G300NH2

I accidentally bricked the Buffalo AirStation Nfiniti High Power while attempting to downgrade the firmware. It keeps looping through boot and the DIAG light just stayed lit. I couldn’t get an IP via wireless or wire. A 30-30-30 reset didn’t work either so I knew I had a bricked router.

I tried to follow the instructions when using a MacBook Pro but I just couldn’t get it to work. Finally, I brought out Selene, my good old Thinkpad X22. I then followed the instructions when using a Windows PC with some variation:

  1. Unplug the ethernet cable and the power cable from the router
  2. Connect the Thinkpad directly to one of the router’s LAN port. Again, do not use the WAN port.
  3. Go to Control Panel\Network and Dial-Up Connections.
    Right click on local area connection and choose “Properties”
    Choose “TCP/IP Properties”. Click properties then click “Use the following IP address”. Enter these values: IP address 192.168.11.2, subnet mask 255.255.255.0, default gateway 192.168.11.1
  4. Open a console window. Go to Windows\Command and run “cmd”
  5. Clear the ARP table. Type “arp -a -d”
  6. Enter the IP to the router’s bricked-state MAC address in the ARP table. Type “arp -s 192.168.11.1 02-AA-BB-CC-DD-1A”. Note that this is not the router’s real MAC address
  7. Verify the new ARP entry. Type “arp -a”
  8. Download (using some other Internet connection obviously) and transfer openwrt-ar71xx-generic-wzr-hp-g300nh2-squashfs-tftp.bin
  9. Change directory to where you downloaded the file.
  10. Transfer the file via TFTP to the router. Type “tftp -i 192.168.11.1 openwrt-ar71xx-generic-wzr-hp-g300nh2-squashfs-tftp.bin” but do not press enter yet
  11. Quickly plug the power cable into the back to turn on the router
  12. Quickly press enter
  13. Timing is critical as there’s only about a 4-second window when the router will accept the TFTP connection. You might have to to steps 9 to 11 repeatedly until you get a successful transfer
  14. After 5-10 minutes, unplug and replug the router

At this point, the router should have been unbricked and has OpenWRT. Move to the MacBook Pro and connect it directly to the router. You should be able to get IP via DHCP. If not, repeat the above.

  1. Open a Terminal window.
  2. Telnet to the router. Type “telnet 192.168.1.1”
  3. Type “passwd” and enter a password. This will disable Telnet and enable SSH.
  4. On the Mac, download wzr-hp-g300nh2-dd-wrt-webupgrade-MULTI.bin (again, using some other Internet connection). In the instructions, this was done in the router using wget. However, I couldn’t get the WAN connection working.
  5. On the Terminal window, change directory to where you downloaded the file.
  6. Type “dd bs=28 skip=1 if=wzr-hp-g300nh2-dd-wrt-webupgrade-MULTI.bin of=firmware.bin”. In the instructions, this was done in the router. However, I was running out of disk space when I tried that, so I did it in the Mac. Thankfully, the output file is valid.
  7. Copy the file to the router. Type “scp firmware.bin [email protected]:/tmp”. Input your password
  8. SSH to the router. Type “ssh -l root 192.168.1.1”. Input your password
  9. Change directory to /tmp. Type “cd /tmp”
  10. Upgrade the firmware. Type “sysupgrade -n /tmp/firmware.bin”
  11. Wait 5-10 minutes for the router to reboot
  12. If you’re lucky, you should already have DD-WRT when you go to http://192.168.1.1 and configure as needed.