hey everyone,

I just wanted to let you know that it is possible to replace the wifi-nic in the Asus WL500gp.
I bought that AP some time ago, because of its powerful cpu, enough ram&flash and the usb ports,
but I was disappointed about the wireless range/performance.
I then decided to try the following and it works fine for me.
Sorry if you all already know this, I wasn't able to find something about that in the wiki or forum and so may be you find this useful:

1. Hardware
You can open the Asus WL500gp case easily by removing the bolts at the bottom of the unit. (they're covered by the gum-feet, remove them).
I think I don't have to mention that you may lose your warranty because of that...
Have a look at the inner-life of your Asus, I guess you will immediately notice that it uses a regular minipci wireless-nic (broadcom).
Remove it and replace it with (whatever) wireless-nic you like.
The built-in broadcom minipci with the asus label is glued to the board, so be careful when removing it.
(I'm now using an Ubiquiti XR2 (600mw)(atheros) as replacement and it works fine..)

2. Software/Firmware
Your firmware/OS/openwrt will need drivers for your new wireless-nic, so make sure you chose a card, that is supported.
Anyway, I suggest you first flash to OpenWRT and make sure it works before you replace the wireless-nic.
I'm using Kamikaze broadcom 2.6 release of OpenWRT together with the madwifi drivers (available as easy-to-install package),
don't forget hostapd if you want to run an ap, but that not part of this thread...

So after this little "tweaking" my Asus WL500gp became exactly what I was looking for.. :-)