I've finally got my serial to usb connectors and can finally diagnosis the bootloop in earnest. As I suspected, the new spi-nor is what's causing the bootloop as its JDEC ide byte is not in the kernel. This the the JEDEC id bytes: 5e 40 18 5e 40 18 for the Zbit 25VQ128ASIG. Is it as simple as adding in the chip code into the kernel code and recompile the image in order for me to install OpenWRT onto the router? Thanks!