Networking → Is my Asus rt 53 bricked

I bought a used Asus RT 53 used off of Craigslist to test out some different firmware. When I got home I got it set up wired and wireless. Merlin did have a firmware for it so I down loaded the latest dd wart firmware for it. Went to the router upgrade and installed it. At the end it read it was completed and to manually do a reboot. I could use the mouse or key board to do the reboot after waiting 5 minutes I disconnected the power. Now when it only get the power and the 2.4ghz light. I can not get to setting page by using 192.168.1.1. I only get this

Settings have been updated. Web page will now refresh.
Changes have been made to the IP address or port number. You will now be disconnected from RT-N53.
To access the settings of RT-N53, reconnect to the wireless network and use the updated IP address and port number.

When I try to connect by wireless my password does not work.
Is the router a brick or there any way to get it to work?

Well I don’t see how it could be “bricked” if you’re getting at least some response from it. You could try to telnet into it too (just to see if you can get something working). And of course, use a wired connection while testing! In fact, hopefully you didn’t use wireless for the update.

Worst case, you can always reinstall the firmware w/ tftp using 192.168.1.1. ASUS routers are almost impossible to brick. They have a restore feature that you can trigger by pulling the power, holding the restore button on the back, and powering back up. Once the power LED begins to flash slowly, it’s ready to accept your firmware update over tftp. tftp is probably the safer update procedure anyway, esp. for a new router (or at least new to you).

How do I use the telnet and reinstall the firmware using w/ tft. I am not that technical so I'll need a step by step.
I down loaded the firmware to my computer before doing the up grade.

telnet is a terminal app that lets you get to the router's command line interface (as opposed to the GUI). Almost every platform has a telnet client either installed, or installable (I know Windows 7 now makes you install/enable it AFTER the initial Windows setup). It will prompt you for username/password. And if that works, then you know it's not bricked.

If you need to update the firmware, you can usually use the current firmware's GUI. But if that fails for any reason, there's always tftp. tftp is available for most platforms and runs from the command line. As I said, you place the router in recovery/restore mode and run tftp to pass the firmware file over to address 192.168.1.1. Of course, you must have your PC configure w/ a WIRED connection to the router and configured statically within the same network (e.g., 192.168.1.2).

A tftp command line on Windows to install dd-wrt might look like this:

tftp –i 192.168.1.1 put dd-wrt.v24-18702_NEWD-2_K2.6_mini_RT-N53.trx

It may take 20-30 secs, depending on file size. Then you wait 5 mins, power off, then power on again. The firmware should be installed and ready to roll. If not, try again.