RT-AC66U - Complete reflash?

[clyne]

I suspect my RT-AC66U router has become corrupt in some way.

Perhaps the bootloader, sometimes the router boots straight in to recovery mode. Right now im running latest stock firmware. I've been flashing Tomato, DD-WRT, Merlin and stock. Back and forth to try things out so I'm not surprised if anything has gone corrupt. One time the router erased its firmware and i had to use recovery to restore. The power adaptor has an EU socket attached which made it very glitchy, I somehow see a connection, it has now been glued properly onto the power adapter.

Now my question is, how to make a complete full re-flash of this router and all it's "re-flashable parts" What equipment is required? is a USB RB-TTL 4 pin enough?

I wanted to learn how to flash the router via serial anyway so this is a good exercise.

 

[bbsc]

You can reflash "all reflashable parts" via SSH/Telnet if you still can access it.
Usually there's no need to do it.
Just flash a firmware you like and clear NVRAM.

If you still want a good exercise, you can try to replace Macronix SPI chip with Winbond SPI chip as I did some time ago.
Macronix seemed to behave in a strange way some times.
I've had 4 or 5 sudden-self-reset to factory defaults with Macronix and zero of them with Winbond during last two years.