Folks, I am a reasonably experienced Linux user but am struggling with installing OpenWRT.
Got a spare (so not dependent on it) Linksys WRT54GL and would like to use it as an extender. Appreciate that due to low memory and flash on this device certain services may be limited.
Reading the installation on locate and download it says for initial installation look for Firmware OpenWrt Install URL then states it'll have a name like factory.bin or factory.img
Getting anything to run on a WRT54GL is quite a challenge, even for very experienced users. That it has ancient Broadcom wireless is a double-whammy, between not supporting current wireless standards (or even old ones), and no open-source drivers limiting it further in its operation modes. That its CPU is dog slow by today's standards (when it came out, a 35 mbps line was screamingly fast) is another drawback.
If you want to "play around" with OpenWrt, I'd recommend an inexpensive router with at least 16 MB of flash and 128 MB of RAM. They start at less than US$20. I've had good luck with the GL.iNet units, such as the AR300M-Lite.
If you want to run a range extender, a dual-band unit that supports 5 GHz is perhaps a good idea. Any single-band range extender at least halves the throughput as it receives a packet in one time slot, then has to use the next time slot to re-transmit it. They're a bit more expensive, typically somewhere in the $40-75 range for "entry level" units, and going up from there to around US$150-200 for units with enough CPU power to handle 500 mbps+ rates.
I'm currently visiting a friend in US and I live in UK - she has a problem with signal strength on her ring video security camera. Signal fine for anything except streaming video.
The Ring extender very pricey so was going to try the old WRT54GL but forgot what you mentioned about halving the speed of wifi so may be of no value anyway.
You could probably look into some Tomato variation for that device. Most of Tomato projects are inactive, using old kernel and considered insecure, but for the purpose of range extender, you may give it a try, especially if the device isn't doing anything at the moment.