I missed this earlier - im interested in this too since I have a Banana Pi BPI-R4, will try to figure it out and get back 
I thought for a second that there might be a detachable card under the shield but its pretty obvious that the chip(s) are attached directly to the card when you look at where the antennas are.
Wow, pretty expensive device. But I really like the style of cooling.
Okay, its two PCBs screwed together. There are three pins, that's probably Power.
And then I see that white thing in the background. Could be a ribbon cable for the pcie connection.
Thats actually an extension for the serial connector, there is a proprietary connector (like you suspected) that probably delivers both power and pcie.
Decided to take them apart after all.
Last picture is of the nand that I forgot to get a closeup of earlier.
Is it possible to convert or decompress an itb file to a bin file ?
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What about those bin files here https://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/24.10.0-rc4/targets/mediatek/filogic/? Can't you use one of them?
Would need to check the default ubnot command maybe to see which flags it uses to boot.
Those are the (initramfs) files I have been using, but you have to excuse me - Im stupid!
I totally forgot to press "Enter" after the smartrg initramfs was loaded 
When I do that I get:
[ 61.288084] mt7996e 0000:01:00.0: Message 0012002d (seq 6) timeout
BusyBox v1.36.1 (2024-12-23 00:55:35 UTC) built-in shell (ash)
_______ ________ __
| |.-----.-----.-----.| | | |.----.| |_
| - || _ | -__| || | | || _|| _|
|_______|| __|_____|__|__||________||__| |____|
|__| W I R E L E S S F R E E D O M
-----------------------------------------------------
OpenWrt 24.10.0-rc4, r28211-d55754ce0d
-----------------------------------------------------
=== WARNING! =====================================
There is no root password defined on this device!
Use the "passwd" command to set up a new password
in order to prevent unauthorized SSH logins.
--------------------------------------------------
And I can run commands.
Now I probably could send a upgrade file to the router and do a sysupgrade to flash the router to OpenWRT, but Im holding off for a while to let someone say that it would be stupid at this point 
Would it be interesting with a dmesg log ? (maybe not since its the smartrg kernel)
Now you could analyse the hardware. 
Dump the partition table of the NAND. Use that as backup. Could also dump the whole flash contents as backup. And share with curious members.
Check for i2c busses. Maybe there is an eeprom in the system? Dump that as well, but don't share. Might contain device specific data. MAC addresses, wifi calibration, whatever.
To permanently run openwrt you would have to override the whole flash, I assume. Not sure if there are special images that keep the original bootloader intact.
Don't break your 300€ device. 
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I will try to avoid that
Dumping the NAND and flash are things that Im not that familiar with, but if someone could give me some example commands I would be glad to do it and share the information
I realize now that Im not sure I have a working network or usb connection but its probably possible to get the files from the router somehow.
You had network in uboot for tftp but now you don't? Maybe need to switch from default DHCP to static.
cat /proc/mtd should give you the "partitions".
And then I read about a tool called nanddump, that should help you make a backup of the flash contents.
You would need internet to install packages for i2c I guess. Then you can look for an eeprom there.
In uboot I was still running early Asus software and now Im running smartrg software which probably do not have the correct network drivers.
Usb (at least version 1 or 2) seems to be working but its not as easy installing packages that way.
If there is a Realtek RTL8372N package available I probably could get network running
Edit:
Searching reveals that RTL8372N might not be supported in OpenWRT ? - that might be a problem.
No, that's the last thing you do, until you finished porting. You're just dipping your toes into the water.
Functional networking is a minimum before you start writing images to the flash. Your aim should be to get a fully functional ramdisk going, only then you can think about writing to flash, making a factory image you can flash from the OEM web UI, etc
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Yes, I know - I was exaggerating a bit
One important aspect, you need to gather the partitioning (/proc/mtd and dmesg) from the original OEM firmware, not your RAM-booted initramfs images. Partitioning data is hardcoded in the image's DTS, it will use whatever is set there, not what's actually on the device - and this makes it useless for potential recovering. Also keep in mind that cat/ dd are not usable for NAND.
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Yes, cat /proc/mtd does not give me any information at all.
Im reading up on this now - What's the easiest way to get a full NAND dump? is probably a good start ?
Better start with what the other guy said. Boot the original firmware and cat proc mtd and dmesg.
And copy that somehow.
My best option is probably to dump the Nand from the uboot console and transfer the files with TFTP to a computer ? Im reading here now Dumping flash via u-boot
If someone knows a good place to read more, let me know
Not sure if it works for you. What I usually do: Adapt the dts to the OEM partition layout, include LuCI in the initramfs image and create dumps the partitions via web interface
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Im setting up the enviroment to create my own OpenWRT images again as we speak and Im going to include drivers for usb to network adapters as a temp solution to get network going.
However, seeing quotes in this forum saying "rtl8372/rtl8373 isn't going to happen with openwrt" makes me think that basic network never is going to work in OpenWRT with this router ?
Is it a good solution to get usb Ethernet running? This implies getting USB running first. Do you know if USB works already with existing initramfs images? If not, I recommend starting directly with the Ethernet ports of the device
Yes, I wrote earlier that usb is working with the initramfs image, but network is not.
And there is, AFAIK no way to get the network chip - RTL8372 - in this router to work in OpenWRT ?