EPIC FAIL
18 December 2025
So at a pawn shop, I discover a Lenovo ThinkCentre M910q for sale, and it's a Core i5. So immediately I am thinking this will be an easy path to making a decent router. Boy, how wrong I was.
So, while this is a fairly decent mini-computer or "thin client" as I like to call them, there is one, as it would turn out, fatal flaw.
There is no PCIe slot on this particular model, which is a shame really.
The power supply for this unit was not original, it was lost
so the usual way of selling these things at the thrift store is to supply it with the cheapest Chinese knockoff power supply they can find.
And from the moment it came home, I had problems with random resets, which I found, could be made to happen at will by wrapping my hand around
the power cable. Clearly Chinese crap, not in any way screened or designed properly, definitely not even for CE mark.
It's not in bad shape, as can be seen, it needed a good clean with compressed air and that's all.
20-22 December 2025
So I am quite confident I will be able to use this as a router, and off I go, to make a plan with the power supply.
I cut the cable off the Chinese knockoff and used a decent MEAN WELL power supply to provide decent power.
29 December 2025
Just before Christmas I had already gotten OPNSense to run on this Lenovo. Because there's no secondary Ethernet port I figured I could use a
USB to Ethernet interface for the WAN facing side. Big mistake!
It stays up for maximum 30 minutes at a time until it falls over (the adapter overheats).
So I then knew I had to try and get a secondary Ethernet port going on this unit, and that's when I ordered in a M.2 to Ethernet adapter.
Everything is closed for the holidays, so I had to wait until early January for it.
It arrived and it's not M.2, its fucking mini-PCIe!!!
January 2026
So I ain't giving up, and I start thinking about what to do, and that's when I look at the missing PCIe connector on this thin client and I begin to wonder if maybe I can hard-wire this ethernet adapter into the PCI slot. Lenovo just left the connector off, right? Nope!
DEEP DIVE: by examining the circuitry (Schemaitc link), I discovered that when the PCIe connector is omitted,
so are all the components connected to it, and because some of those components (their footprints) are located under the Intel CPU socket, I can't simply go in with
a soldering iron and install them to get the PCIe to work. I am shit out of luck!
At this point I am realizing that I should go to PLAN B- build a router with a standard desktop PC.
Around this time, my good friend, some 1500km away, who has access to a scrapyard, sends me a ASRock H61M-VS3 motherboard salvaged from e-waste.
And around this time, the idea enters my head to make my own router, almost from scratch!