bkil vs. programming

TL-WR1043ND v1.10 unbricking with serial needles Achievement unlocked. I've purchased a used TP-Link TL-WR1043ND v1.10 for about 6 EUR recently. Although, the price was suspiciously low, I was hoping that the seller might not had enough experience with hardware. He had neither included a model number, nor any usable photos in his ad. You could not see any antenna or connector either, and the thumbnails looked indifferent from the ubiquitous 54Mb/s devices also on sale. Fortunately, I could zoom in just enough on one of them to decode the very long phrase "Ultimate Wireless N Gigabit Router" from the handful of pixels visible and so I closed the deal quickly. You generally do not want to ask questions in such cases. Unfortunately, the device did not show any signs of life other than the power LED and the hardware switched LAN. Neither buttons did anything and I could not see any activity over the ethernet ports either, so it was clear that I had to commence debri...

There, I fixed it for you: WARNING: this is a pro-only approach, as potentially bad contacts could introduce typing errors which could spoil your write address and brick the boot loader beyond recovery without you even noticing! So after I got the ill router, I bought a new 3.3V CA-42 cable for about $3 at a local store. I didn't have my soldering kit nearby and anyway didn't want to mess up this beauty, so I first started experimenting. What could I lose besides a non-functional router? I have dozens of fully functional ones to spare. Actually, after all this messing around with firmwares, this is the only one of my routers which is bricked, and it wasn't even my fault. Anyway, I first tested the vendor specific wiring of the cable. Blue is ground, white is RX and yellow is TX on mine. I've then proceeded with readout-only tests. Actually, touching the bare wires themselves almost worked. I could get an almost complete log this way. Although, to get the whole t...