Another One

Found another DX-NRUTER in a bag of old stuff at my parents' house. Dunno if I should leave it stock or put DD-WRT on it... I've read that Wi-Fi encryption and MAC filtering don't work on it when it's a repeater because of the Broadcom drivers. Bleh.

Got both EA3500 routers working as secure repeaters by following this guide.

Don't understand the hate for Sonic Lost World; did it just release too closely to Super Mario Galaxy? I think it's one of the best-looking and best-written Sonic games; the Genesis games are still the pinnacle for me, Adventure/Heroes haven't aged well, 2006 is broken in so many ways, Secret Rings/Black Knight were surprisingly good, Unleashed is fine albeit ridiculous, Colors is totally solid, Generations was a revelation, and Lost World is genuinely innovative. Oh, and Team Sonic Racing is kind of a slog.

Revisiting Injustice 1 & 2 after MK11; decent.

Trivial

DD-WRT totally unlocks 1300Mbps Wi-Fi on the EA6300V1. Neat.

DIR-859 doesn't compare to the Archer A7 in the larger/obstructed space.

Dusted-off the DX-NRUTER - had forgotten that I broke the Wi-Fi radio when I last flashed it with DD-WRT. Looks like it only works with dd-wrt.v24-13577_NEWD-2_std-nokaid.bin from 2010. Tried a number of DD-WRT releases with no luck - none of the dd-wrt.v24_ releases support the radio, and all of the dd-wrt.v24-48884_NEWD-2_K2.6_ releases bricked it - thank goodness for TFTP. Decided to give it a shot as a repeater, and it worked fine until I enabled any Wi-Fi security on the repeater... I think I'm just over it now.

I had way more fun with Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate than I expected to after XL. The story mode still doesn't compare to 2011's and Kronika is uninspiring, but the new Krypt is a major upgrade over XL's and the character customisation is unreasonably deep. Had way more fun grinding towers to unlock more of the Krypt so I could further customise my characters... Until the grind got ridiculous; I need something like 7500 souls to progress now, and that just turned me right off the whole endeavour. Finding Reptile was a really nice nod to the 1995 movie though :) Reinstalled XL afterward, avoiding the story mode, and really appreciated the towers and the Krypt a lot more this time.

Got a little scared for a minute there...

DD-WRT on the EA6300V1 because OpenWrt suggests that they're effectively a non-option and I can't find any info on how Tomato compares to the closed-source aspects of DD-WRT. It's been years since I've really messed around with any of them, and I'm not quite up-to-speed on all of this - so I went with what seemed like the safest bet. Ended-up following this guide, but with the latest DD-WRT as the final step - pretty convoluted, but it worked! I couldn't get 5GHz speeds over 400Mbps at first, but it just turned-out that DD-WRT's "Auto" channel setting is maybe not good. Did a site survey, moved things over to a less-crowded part of the spectrum, and now everything looks happy. Next test is with the Archer T9E to see if an EA6300V1 really can reach AC1600 speeds.

Checked-out another thrift store today, found a Sony BDP-S1700, a DIR-868L, another DIR-822, and an Acer tower with a Core 2 Quad, 3GB of RAM, and a GTX 650... The tower was the most expensive item at $15 CDN. Neat projects, but I left them for someone else.

Because I'm bored...

Archer A7

• AC1750
• 3 x 5 dBi
• 28 dBm
• USB 2.0
• Single-Core

DIR-859

• AC1750
• 3 x 2 dBi
• 20 dBm
• No USB
• Single-Core

 EA6400

• AC1600
• 2 x 4 dBi + 3 x 5 dBi (internal)
• 24 dBm
• USB 3.0
• Dual-Core

Unless I'm misunderstanding how my devices are reporting link speeds, I don't think I have anything that really takes advantage of the 300~450Mbps or 1300Mbps Wi-Fi speeds.

Found-out that while USB 3.0 seems to make a significant difference in NAS performance, the only stock options are SMB 1.0 or FTP - neither of which is particularly secure.

I have no idea if the dual-core BCM4708 in the EA6400 performs any better than the single-core QCA9563 in the other two.

I'm not super-familiar with antennas, but it looks like the DIR-859 would be best for an open area with no obstructions, the EA6400 is more directional but also has more antennas and beamforming, and the Archer A7 is a bit of a brute-force approach.

So of the two places I'm deploying to, I think it makes sense to have the Archer A7 in the larger home with the most obstructions, and then the EA6400 in the smaller open area where more devices will be accessing it at once.

Finally, install DD-WRT on the EA6300V1 (no OpenWrt because Broadcom, apparently) to effectively make it another EA6400, and there's my backup. Test the DIR-859 in the larger/obstructed space for science before giving it away, and... Yeah, that's the ticket!

Flannel Zebra Jammies

Two more:

D-Link DIR-859: AC1750, Gigabit Ethernet, no USB ($7)

Linksys EA6400: AC1600, Gigabit Ethernet, USB 3.0 ($7)

...Replaced my EA6300 with the EA6400 because why not, and gonna keep the DIR-859 as a backup. Giving away the EA6300, DIR-822, two EA3500s, and a Dynex DX-NRUTER.

Oh! Turns-out the EA6300 I've had for almost a decade is an EA6300V1, which is an EA6400 with EA6300 firmware. Huh.

Pretty-much wrapped-up Forza Horizon 4 and Mortal Kombat 11 - completing a few odds-and-ends in each (LEGO® Speed Champions and the new Krypt are really fun) but the big takeaway is that I am now officially spoiled by pseudo-HDR and VRR up to 240Hz.

Also tried Sonic Lost World again - on Windows this time, and it's kinda pretty good.