Hardware modding

Just out of curiosity …is there anyone who has gone as far as modifying/upgrading the hardware on their routers (maybe soldering larger flash chip etc)

I have done some research and have found that there are a lot of boards out there with similar hardware - Some with with more more or different wireless chipsets …Some with better/worse features (i.e. less/more ports) but generally very similar.

What peaks my curiosity is ….Other than the actual hardware modifications are there other modifications that would be required to perform such an upgrade? Firmware, drivers, etc ?…let’s say a system has 32mb of memory but you find that the chipset supports 64mb. Or there is another model that is almost identical but the only difference is memory. So you find someone who is very talented at soldering ..And they replace the memory with the upgraded module. Would the system recognize the memory expansion automatically ? Or would there be additional modifications required to get the system to recognize the upgrade? What kind of tools would be required ?

If the image doesn't recognize the upgraded flash and/or RAM, you would have to modify the settings for the builder, and generate one yourself.

Note, if you upgrade your flash, you'll need to dump the content of the old one, and move it into the new one, using a SPI programmer.

some upgrade threads:

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Very unlikely but not impossible. Basically, what I wrote there applies verbatim:

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Thank You! That’s perfect…

What sucked me In was looking through the hardware and I noticed a board that had a lot of memory…It turned out to be the pineapple…and I started looking into similar boards but I couldn’t find one exactly the same…some had more/less memory …but I really like pineapples wireless chipsets. …

But I don’t much like their firmware…so I started looking other options and it always seems to be the same issue…

I appreciate the feedback!

I do want to delve a little into custom builds…if I have to learn to do my own builds so be it…that is where my interest is…how you guys do some of this stuff.

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