Hello guys!

I would like to report a case that happened to me and maybe help people who may have the same problem.

After doing a firmware update, my RB3011UiAS-RM died. When I turned it on, it only lits the blue LED and the LEDs of the first 5 ethernet ports with LCD fully white. NetInstall did not recognizes the router, since it did not start. No data was presented through the console port.

I contacted support and they told me to take it to a technical assistance, but in the region where I live here in Brazil, there are not many specialists in repairing mikrotik equipment.
I looked for similar cases on the internet and found a thread here on the forum of a person who reported the same problem. (viewtopic.php?t=162769)

He just reported that he had replaced the 25q16 memory and that everything was back to normal. I looked for other topics that talked about changing this memory and read that I would lose the license.

How did I come to the conclusion that it was a problem with the 25Q16JVSIQ (U904) flash memory?

First, the friend who wrote the previous topic had already written this and the symptoms that my RB presented were the same.

Second, I removed the old memory, read the data a few times with a common recorder (CH341a) and each time I read it I wrote the contents in a bin file. Every time the memory was read, it showed an error after 50% of the verification (address 0x100000).

I then compared the files and the data from addresses 0x100000 to 0x14940f were changed... the rest of the data was the same between all the readings.

I looked a lot on the internet and found in a telegram group the BIOS (firmware) of the RB3011, I downloaded it. Using a hexadecimal editor I saw that in this file, there was also data from address 0x100000 to 0x14940f.

Then I opened one of the files I read from old memory and replaced the entire data block from 0x100000 to 0x14940f with the data from the file downloaded by telegram.

I soldered the memory back to the board and bingo! It started and the level 5 license is fully functional. With the console cable, I can see RouterBoot in action.

So I decided to leave this report in case someone has the same problem.

Hi!
Congrats!
Very nice work!

Could you tell me exactly where you got the firmware from, which Telegram group?
And maybe you could upload it somewhere?

https://i.mt.lv/cdn/rb_bootloaders/ipq8060_3.41.fwf
Isn't that the firmware? It's available on MikroTik products page.

https://mikrotik.com/product/RB3011UiAS ... -downloads

Indeed it is!
Thanks!
But what determines for which router this is available?

MT stopped offering fwf files for download quite some time ago (and the one offered for RB3011 is aged as well, firmware version numbers are in line with ROS version numbers for quite some years already, the one offered for download is predating this change).

Nowdays, all the firmwares are included in ROS .npk file itself. If one tries a bit (use 7zip to open .npk file, search for fwf files), one can get it out. Often there are multiple fwf files and one has to pick the right one - file name has to contain exact firmware-type name (e.g. beware of "ipq4000" versus "ipq4000L").

Another thing is that only a few modern device models support upgrading firmware via console port nowdays ... so dealing with fwf files directly for those platforms makes even less sense.

Hi!
Thanks for the tip!

Looks like the file system is "SquashFS".
And the compression method is probably "LZMA".
And indeed, I found the file "ipq8060-6.49.8.fwf" (latest Long-term) in the /etc directory.

@mkx Very professional post!

Can I replace the memory in RB3011? I had bad blocks. The router could not start, repairing it via netinstall helped until the first restart or update and the problem returned. Partitioning did the same thing. It seems to me that the NAND flash needs to be replaced, but is it possible and where to look for it?

Best Regards

Can I replace the memory in RB3011?

No you can’t. If you replace the chip, you lose your ROS license.

Maybe if you try to contact Mikrotik support and explain situation they can help you with your license.

Sent them supout.rif file

Can you please specify a telegram channel you've found BIOS in?
I've downloaded ipq8060_3.41.fwf file from mikrotik.com, but it is much smaller, than the *.bin file, taken from 3011 itself. And so I do not understand, where to insert it.

@riy: what's wrong with instructions in post #5 above?

@riy: what's wrong with instructions in post #5 above?

Nothing wrong, it's clear. Let me explain in details:
If I dump firmware from 3011, I get a *.bin file with size = 2097152 bytes (2048kbytes), because 16-mbit SPI flash is used in the router. And there are no big empty spaces in the file, most if it's contents contains some data.
The size of *.fwf file downloaded from mikrotik.com is much smaller, ipq8060_3.41.fwf is 34kbytes and extracted from *.npk ipq8060-6.49.10.fwf is 35 kbytes.
So I can not understand where to insert fwf contents in the bin file and what to do with other space.

I believe that fwf file is in a kind of proprietary pseudo-flash file. The flash uploader (built in ROS) probably interprets that and writes it to flash the way it should be done. So those fwf files are not usable for generic flash writers.
One thing that ROS updater definitely does is it avoids flash regions with information about license and information about particular device (serial number, MAC addresses, etc.).

That's right. And because of that I'm looking for complete *.bin files: I'd like to restore 3011 router with corrupted flash. And may be some other routers, because I'm working with different Mikrotik products.

Exactly for reasons I'm mentioning (the device-specific bits) you can't get a complete .bin file, that would mean cloning a device and that's not good (not only because of cloning license, there are other, more technical, issues involved).

I suggest you to get in touch with support, they might be able to help you resurrect the failed RB3011.

I've tried 3 or 4 times, with different routers. They never help.

In that case, I'm affraid you're screwed.

This flash problem seems to be a pretty common reason for the failure of these units (including the 2011s). We've probably had this happen to us about 6 times on field routers. On our production routers we've pretty much swapped them all out with RB4011 or 5009's.

I've had a contact with some local warranty service centers, and they sent me equipment they can not restore. To say without false modesty, I've restored lots of them. And of course because of that I do have some statistics about how Mikrotik devices die. And yes, you are right: 2011 and 3011 really often die because of flash failure. At my storage I have a "dead man's chest" full of 2011 and 3011 devices fully working except the routerboot flash.
As for 4011 and 5009, huh. They are much more modern, so give them some time ;-}