Increase the sensitivity of Asus WL-500gP Hardware mod.
If u are just not so skillgull with soldering than i suggest the 1st method.
Method 1.
Shortcut resistor R17 next to your braodcom wifi mini pci (the shielded thing with the barcode where the antenna connector is)
This increases sensitivity by alot because the receiver (rx amplifier) is not powered at all (its a mystery why). By shortwiring this resistor u alwasy give power to the amplifier , receive sensitivity increases a lot.
To shortwiri it simply use an iron and just cover it with pb. Dont use to much though.
The downside of this method is that the noise gets amplified too, thus u dont have the same performance like method 2.
Method 2.
Open up the wireless broadcom mini pci shield. The small shield with the barcode on it. U will see a cross shield underneath, cut it away just to have more space to work. Its not going to harm anything anyway.
locate and find c93 and c94. U will see that there is a small space next to them, so by unsoldering them u could resolder them again by rotating by 90 degress. Do that and there u go.
I have no responsibility if u damage this thing. Do it by your own risk.
After the mod my link speed almost tripled, with a parabol reflector (u know the paper ones, like windsurfer from techanvil are very good) i could pick up ap from over 5 km.
Overall i measured an increase of up to 4-5 times in sensitivity by using the wl-500 gp as a client.
Also i noticed an dramtic linkspeed increasing when wl was used as a ap.
rammy
Asus recogizes error and wil replace routers with 62KOhm R17 resistor
Done it on my 2 WL500Gp routers
For anyone interrested i've done the R17 mod 2x this evening. I don't have any soldering experience on this size components. I have however soldered one SMD component once before.
Anyone going to try this be aware you DO need very high precision. If in doubt test on a broken piece of hardware like an old mobile phone. I was shitting my pants while doing this mod.
I bought 10x 62ohm resistors ... they only sell per 10 and cost me (for the 10) 1,50 in euro's. They gave me 11 by accident ;-).
First I opened up one of my routers to find the board inside to be way smaller than expected. The SMD components are 10x bigger than what I found inside. Anyway I had already $%^%% the warranty so I continued.
I unsoldered the R17 resistor which took a while to get out. Soldered the SMD resistor diagonaly away from the other contact and used wire to connect the other side.
My first router didn't seem to get away from -98dB however reception already seemed better so I went on to #2.
Doing my second router I found the -98dB had dropped to -85dB which made me rethink the first attempt.
I redid the first and at some moment my router seemed borked. It did receive but my laptop and other router could not see it. After some tinkering it worked again. I think it was some plastic residue in the slot.
Now my recetion is -85dB :-]
However I do have unstable WDS which needs looking into. Stops after a few minutes of service. This is a whole other problem since WDS initially never wanted to work.
Now that they are working and I'm sending this post to illustrate my thankfulness.
Thank you for inventing this mod!!!!!!
Confirming router OK, S/N starting with "79..." (SEP-07)
Hello!
I've checked R17 on my router and it's 62 ohms allright, the wi-fi card reads "WL-120G V2A R1.01" the mainboard reads "WL-500G PREMIUM R1.14" the unit's serial number begins with "79..." the firmware was :) Oleg's ver. 1.9.2.7-9 ;)
Greetings
Inertial
