OpenWrt on MR100 with damaged 4G slot

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

Hello OpenWRT community!

I recently went on vacation to Italy, and while browsing the Facebook Marketplace, I stumbled upon a TP-Link MR100 v1 router for sale. I contacted the seller and managed to get it for around €40. Unfortunately, when I got home and tried to set it up, I discovered that the SIM card slot was completely destroyed. It seems I was scammed since the router can't function as a 4G router now.

To avoid throwing the router away, I'd like to try installing OpenWRT on it. I searched this forum but couldn't find any specific information on how to install OpenWRT on this particular router. I tried following a tutorial for other routers in the MR series, but when I used TFTPd64 and pressed the reset button on the router, the boot file wouldn't upload.

Can anyone here help me out? Is there any firmware I can install on this router to at least use it as a repeater or wireless client? At this point, I'm considering throwing it away, which is quite disheartening.

The router has 2 ports (1 WAN and 1 LAN) and works as a non-4G router, but it doesn't support 5GHz Wi-Fi or anything like that. Any help would be greatly appreciated, and thank you all in advance!

2

Could try opening it up and resoldering in a new 4g slot if you can find one that's close enough on something else or the part. or wire in a sim breakout broad like this. Will look ugly but should work.

Please read these warning's.

I'd return it, or use it a as door stop or it's original firmware with a soldered in sim reader. it's not going to run OpenWRT routers that do are listed on.

3

I just got through figuring out some similar stuff myself. hope what I posted helps you.