I have managed to get my Routerboard 951-2n into a very odd state.
The initial state is ether1 plugged into the laptop using a known-good cable; the laptop is configured to 192.168.88.11 and has a the full suite of mikrotik tools (NeighborViewer, Netinstall, Winbox, etc.).
When plugged in power, the power and activity lights (between the power jack and ether1 port) are on, but the ether link-light does not come up. The router, obviously, does not appear via neighborviewer or winbox.
Once powered off, if I press the reset button (between the power jack and the power LED) while applying power, all the ethernet ports light up and then turn off, leaving only the ether1 LED lit. Neighborviewer and winbox will show 0.0.0.0 associated with ether1 MAC address.
MAC telnetting into the router and setting the IP address for ether1 works fine.
What happen next depends on how long the power is disconnected.
A short disconnection will produce a reset that keeps ether1 link LED lit.
A longer disconnection will put me back to the initial state with the exception that once the reset button is applied at power-up the IP address assigned to either1 will be configured and the LED light for ether1 will be lit.
I’ve only been able to netinstall router OS using the reset button under the rubber foot, but upgrading and downgrading the operating system doesn’t have any impact on the above behavior.
So… is this thing just f*cked in the head, or is there something I can do to prevent me from throwing it in the trash?