I'm stuck, maybe someone here can kindly advise?

I've got in a pile of WRTs to muck about with, both G and GS models, mainly versions 1 - 2. I've pretty much sussed the main open source firmware for them (openwrt, dd, etc) and had a lot of fun so far making these little babies do more than the overpriced commercial Cisco enterprise kit I work with, I'm competent with Linux and work in internetworking / network security so I hit the ground running. However, I want to attach external media to it, SD card, USB, I don't care, but this just defeats me - soldering to those tiny points is beyond me - I have tried and tried and tried, but I just can't work out how the hell you guys manage to solder between those bus lanes without shorting anything.

I'm no sparky

Not one to ask for help lightly, I bought the WRT Hacking book and have checked every thread on the net - repeatedly, but those RP4 pins on the GS are just too tiny. I thought all of my ships had come in when I discovered "Wire Glue" - the perfect cheat for this job, but it's worse than solder as it runs everywhere. 2 weeks of trying, utter failure. Now I must admit, my soldering iron tip looks like a shovel compared to these connectors, but even with a needle tip I don't think I can do it.

Now I'm sat here staring at JP1 and JP2 on a GS V1.1 - can't I just use these to connect a serial port and then convert that serial to USB?

I have attached a 10 pin IDC port to it and have made a JTAG cable - is there any way to convert this to support external media?

Any advice here would be seriously appreciated.

I'm pretty shure, having same hardware that jtag connector or serial port wount help you, uless you have pc connected via serial, with shared hdd.. Soldering on GS1.1 is as easy as to go for a walk. Just buy good soldering iron, it took me less that few hours to make sd reader.