RB 532 failed boot

RouterOS General
1

Hi there,

I know it’s an old board but I would like to use it…
I have RB 532 which won’t boot.

I can use terraterm to RS232 into the console and can see the Routerboot 2.18 messages…

a) Boot loader is 2.18. I believe I tried to upgrade it to OS 5.17 and after that it would not boot. I thought I had upgraded the boot loader correctly..

b) Boot messages are:

RouterBOOT booter 2.18

RouterBoard 2.18

CPU frequency 264 MHz
Memory size 32 MB

Press any key within 2 seconds to enter setup..
loading kernel from nand… OK
setting up elf image… OK
jumping to kernel code
System halted

-------------- THAT’S IT

I can’t use ethernet to access the board…

c) Do I need to upgrade the boot loader?
d) IF so how…
e) How can I get a new 5.16 or 5.25 OS onto it?

f) I notice in the configuration options, there is o - boot device
and the option to boot from the CF slot … CAN an RB 532 boot from CF?
And - how do I get RouterOS onto a CF - Netinstall WON’T let me put routerboard os onto a CF card - only X86 !!

Any comments MUCH appreciated.

Cheers all

2

Any thoughts please?

Firstly, how to get Router-OS onto a CF card…

Secondly, how to possibly recover from what looks like a corrupt OS in the onboard NAND storage. I can see from the boot menu I can format the NAND but if I do that, how the heck do i get a new copy of the OS onto the NAND (and I lost the licence but I am prepared to live with that for the sake of recovering the RB!)

Cheers, Bill

3

Try with netinstall procedure

http://www.wirelessinfo.be/index.php/mikrotik/pages/netinstalle

4

Thanks, I will try this…

I am not very hopeful, however - you will see the failed boot in my first post, and the fact the system halts when trying to load the program.

However, the action of powering on and holding the reset key may work and enable me to get the OS into the NAND.

Many thanks!

5

YEP, Netinstall with PXE boot fixed it!!!
Many thanks - that’s saved me around £100…

Also, I upgraded an old RB133C from 5.8 to 5.26 with netinstall and PXE boot - it would not take the .npk file by simply copying it to the board in ‘files’ and rebooting, but the PXE boot wrote the new 5.26 to the nand and it’s now on the new version.

Another trick I learned is that netinstall can erase the PW incase you have lost it, so that has been a very sucessful exercise for the future.

Many thanks again, Bill

PS AND I learned I can overclock the RB 532 to 333 MHz from 266 MHz - it was previously a bit slow and now feels a lot snappier! So all in all, a very useful exercise…

PPS - BUT - I would STILL like to be able to put RouterOS onto a CF card and boot from that (netinstall is very reluctant to put anything other than x86 onto a CF…)

PPPS - I have increased your karma as well :mrgreen: :laughing: :sunglasses:

6

I don’t think you can put RouterOS on CF for RB532. At least using some easy or supported way. I wanted to do that some time ago, because my router’s NAND died completely, but like you I quickly realized that netinstall is not going to help me (I mean with CF install).
I guess it could probably be done manually, if it was possible to extract files from .npk packages (I found some scripts but they did not work), put them on CF and fix booting. But even if it worked, there would be different Software ID, so no licence. With price of new one and amount of work required, it could perhaps be an interesting hacking project, but not a serious solution.

7

Thanks Bill appresiate that.