Netgear R7000 FreshTomato Bricked to Unbricked

Netgear R7000 was a well-spec'ed router when it was released in 2013. There's a community of router firmware builders at FreshTomato.org- they have packaged a really well rounded suite of pro-sumer network features on top of the basic router functions such as VLAN, access control, bandwidth monitoring.

You have to know what you're doing when using updating your standard manufacturer firmware for the router and configuring the features. It's quite a learning curve, but by the end of it, you'll have a much better network setup.

One of the hazards of such endeavours, is the risk of 'bricking' your router. The problem is that this router comes with two different CPUs- ARM and MIPS; therefore two different sets of firmware files. I made 'that' of choosing the wrong firmware.

This guide should help others unbrick the R7000 router, using an Apple mac computer with the TFTP method.

If you are in a 'bricked' state, the router will have a flashing white power light; I think this indicates it is in 'rescue' mode. This happens after a short period of booting immediately after power on, the power light is amber during this phase.

I used the wiki reference on the FreshTomato.org website, and added my own adaptations for MacOS, here: https://wiki.freshtomato.org/doku.php/firmware_basics_procedures

1. Ethernet cable
2. USB connector/adapter for ethernet cable to mac
3. Alternate internet connection for downloading firmware

The TFTP method only seems to work with the initial more compact firmware.

Download the initial firmware, e.g. https://freshtomato.org/downloads/freshtomato-arm/2023/2023.2/Netgear%20initial%20files/freshtomato-R7000-2023.2-initial-64K.zip

Download the final firmware required, e.g. https://freshtomato.org/downloads/freshtomato-arm/2023/2023.2/K26ARM/freshtomato-R7000-ARM-2023.2-AIO-64K.zip

Connect the ethernet cable directly from your mac to one of the LAN ports (not WAN which is used for your internet connection). If needed use a ethernet adapter.

Make sure there are no other connections to the router (apart from power of course!).

I am assuming that the router is already with a flashing white power light. If the amber light is on, wait until it becomes white.

In you mac settings, go to network.

Find the ethernet connection, then click details to set up a manual IP as follows.

IP Address: 192.168.1.9

Router: 192.168.1.1

Leave the rest as default.

Open the Terminal app.

First check that the connection is working, using ping by typing:

ping 192.168.1.1

There should be a response like this (you might need to type Ctrl-C to stop it):

PING 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1): 56 data bytes

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=3.450 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=3.461 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=3.402 ms

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=2.359 ms

Change your directory to the location of your initial file, by using cd, e.g.

cd Downloads

Then set up the 'trivial FTP' connection- type:

tftp 192.168.1.1

The prompt will change to tftp>

Then type:

put freshtomato-R7000-2023.2-initial-64K.chk

The copy will take less than a minute, when it finishes, the response should look like:

Sent 7831610 bytes during 27.7 seconds in 15297 blocks

The router will then auto-restart and then you'll see the power light turn amber as it is booting. If you didn't clear the NVRAM, the web interface for FreshTomato will be available at the original IP address that you previously configured. You'll need to adjust the connection settings back to DHCP to connect to the router.

That's it! Hopefully this will have recovered your router to the right firmware.