Encontrei esta página do fórum do OpenWRT , pesquisando por aí.
Em particular, no final, um cara com seu roteador declara:
Then I booted vista on this notebook and setup the same ip config. I tried the standard d-link firmware upgrade without recovery mode from internet explorer 8 and it still did not work! The solution was, to also use the recovery mode (press reset for ~30s until power blinks orange), only then flashing the downloaded image openwrt-ar71xx-dir-825-b1-squashfs-backup-loader.bin did work. From there it was easy to sysupgrade to my own image.
Thank you! I hope this helps others that try this.
Ele tirou as últimas palavras da minha boca.