finally fixed fatron (asus wl500gp v2 router)

it's been a year but the router's finally reflashed.

(on Linux)

1. Switch off networking
2. connect laptop directly to LAN port on router
3. The router's going to be coming up on:192.168.1.1 so... set the laptop's IP to something else but in the same subnet (e.g. 192.168.1.123, I used 192.168.1.2 as per TFM), do it like this: sudo ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.2 netmask 255.255.255.0 up
4. start pinging the router (nothing's coming back), like this: ping -t -w2 192.168.1.1
5. hard-reset the router (it must be: 30/30/30)
6. during the last 30, the pings will start responding with a ttl of 100, when it's 100 you can tftp it, (normally when you boot the router, it gives a few ttl100's and then you get 64's if you have a look)
7. tftp can only send a 4MB file (or less) so no huge binaries, I used: dd-wrt.v24_mini_asus.trx,
8. When the ttl100's start coming, send the binary with this: echo -e "binary\nrexmt60\ntrace\nput dd-wrt.v24_mini_asus.trx\n" | tftp 192.168.1.1
9. If it's going ok, you'll see lots of: sent
10. DATA
11. received ACK ...
12. After that finishes, leave the router to write to nvram, I gave it ten minutes, this is the important bit, you need to leave it alone for a bit
13. hard reboot it, so switch off, count to 30 and then switch on, you should be able to get on the web-if now
14. leave it alone for another 5 minutes
15. hard-reset the router again (it must be: 30/30/30) - and you're done!

I got my info from a few sites but this one which explained the "leave it alone for a bit" bit was best: http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=51486