On: Small Linux PCs overview

[joshu]

Btw the 703n is really easy to brick, be careful. I am on my third.

[nemik → joshu]

Easy to unbrick also though, don't throw out your bad ones! Follow the instructions at: http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wr703n#back.to.origin...

And don't worry about soldering the serial leads to those pads. If you suck at soldering as much as I do, you'll just end up lifting the pads. Instead just take some wires and tape them to the board. Like this http://twitpic.com/9ftjme/full and yea they look weird in that image, because I had lifted the pads before I came up with this idea :/

[joshu → nemik]

I dunno, soldering and "easy to unbrick" seem like opposites to me :)

[exDM69 → joshu]

If you need to do any serious hacking, you need to have a serial port in there. That usually requires a little soldering, and sometimes the pads on the PCBs can be a little tricky to solder to.

But after that you can access the bootloader and early kernel console and you can get a lot more stuff done if you need to. Like unbricking after a screwup.