My newest hobby: Reviving end-of-life wireless routers for use with current OpenWRT by replacing their flash chips with 16MB ones.
With 16MB flash you're finally able to set up a 11s compliant mesh network.
@hennichodernich honest question: how desirable is a 500 MHz MIPS with 64 MB RAM for mesh routing?
@funkylab It works better as a repeater than a relayd STA bridge, that's all that counts.
Means, there are only 2 nodes in the mesh and there's no roaming, as all clients are connected to the MAP via wired Ethernet.
@funkylab And 24€ is a competitive price:
https://www.amazon.de/TP-Link-TL-WR902AC-433Mbit-Accesspoint-Repeater/dp/B01MY5JIJ0
(The AliExpress repeaters aren't much cheaper and require upgrading their flash as well.)
Amazon.de

@hennichodernich that's true, though I used to use this one with openwrt running relayd to get network to desktop PC and ethernet printer: https://preisvergleich.heise.de/strong-dual-band-gigabit-router-1200-a1645287.html
price (35€) hasn't changed much, and I gave away mine to someone that could make more use of it.
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@hennichodernich Would you like three dusty WRT54GL? Or are those too old to be upgraded with that method?
@brezelradar Those are too old, I'm afraid. End-of-life means 5-8 years in this context.
@hennichodernich I share the same hobby though have never successfully managed to upgrade the memory as my soldering is just not good enough 😃
@smallsolar I socketed the flash chips using small adapter PCBs I designed myself. By doing so, I only need to solder to the PCB once and can easily return to the previous state in case I mess something up.
@hennichodernich oh that's really clever, do you have more details anywhere?
@smallsolar It's just a little board with castellated holes that fits on an SO-8 footprint. Onto this I solder a 2x4 1.27mm pin header socket, and then I plug into this another little adapter board.
@hennichodernich
I have a handful of these in the backburner as well.
And one La Fonera that also needs a RAM upgrade.