I recently picked up a DLINK DIR-657 (HD Media 1000) for 5 dollars, as my e3000 I flashed with DD-WRT and tomato etc is unstable as hell. It's not the flash, it's just toast I think, and this is even with a fan blowing into it.
Anyway, the idea was to flash this DIR-657 with DD-WRT but silly me I didn't check if it was compatible first, and DLINK's quite often tend not to be. So I can't turn it into a network wireless bridge like wanted to, so I'm going to tinker instead. This lead to me looking up a load of reviews and mods for it, and what I found out was that this router actually sucks with the stock internal antenna's. For around 3 dollars I could get the SMA connectors/cables to put external antenna's on it, but then after thinking, I remember there was an old dlink router sitting in the garage (A DIR-628), and I thought I'd check out if this was capable of being a bridge, and if it wasn't, so I opened it up. Low and behold, it wasn't an all-in-one device, but actually used a separate PCI 2.4/5Ghz wireless card. Wow.. awesome, I'd actually almost bought one recently so this saved me some money PLUS I got the aerials with it. Tried it in my ACER L3600 and it got picked up immediately and is running awesome at 5Ghz. Very happy. I need to drill some proper mounting holes, but extremely happy with dual antenna machine.
Unfortunately this does mean I'll still likely have to spend the 3 dollars on wires for the DIR-657... but still... worked out nicely on something else I wanted
TL;DR: I opened an old DIR-628 to rob for it's aerials, and found it actually used a PCI 2.4/5Ghz wireless card... awesome I'd been looking for one for my small form factor PC!
Anyway, the idea was to flash this DIR-657 with DD-WRT but silly me I didn't check if it was compatible first, and DLINK's quite often tend not to be. So I can't turn it into a network wireless bridge like wanted to, so I'm going to tinker instead. This lead to me looking up a load of reviews and mods for it, and what I found out was that this router actually sucks with the stock internal antenna's. For around 3 dollars I could get the SMA connectors/cables to put external antenna's on it, but then after thinking, I remember there was an old dlink router sitting in the garage (A DIR-628), and I thought I'd check out if this was capable of being a bridge, and if it wasn't, so I opened it up. Low and behold, it wasn't an all-in-one device, but actually used a separate PCI 2.4/5Ghz wireless card. Wow.. awesome, I'd actually almost bought one recently so this saved me some money PLUS I got the aerials with it. Tried it in my ACER L3600 and it got picked up immediately and is running awesome at 5Ghz. Very happy. I need to drill some proper mounting holes, but extremely happy with dual antenna machine.
Unfortunately this does mean I'll still likely have to spend the 3 dollars on wires for the DIR-657... but still... worked out nicely on something else I wanted
TL;DR: I opened an old DIR-628 to rob for it's aerials, and found it actually used a PCI 2.4/5Ghz wireless card... awesome I'd been looking for one for my small form factor PC!
