Yeah, it’s a little fiddly but not too difficult. Here’s what I did (after running the AT commands from a PC to configure the modem):
- Remove the 4 rubber stoppers in the screw wells on the bottom and loosen the screws.
- Use a spudger or flathead screwdriver to unclip the bottom from the case and remove it.
- Take out the 2 screws holding the mainboard into the case.
- Remove the short black antenna wire from the mainboard that’s attached to the little antenna strip inside the case.
- Grab the heatsink and use it to pull the mainboard away from the ports in the case a bit and then lever it up, with the ports staying down inside the case.
- Remove the 4 screws going through the metal plate on the back of the mainboard to release the heatsink.
- Pull off the heatsink and set it aside. I was able to keep the fan plugged in.
- Push a screwdriver through the silicone on the bracket holding the modem card in and unscrew it.
- Unplug all the antennas from the card and swap in the new one. I didn’t move over the foam from the old card, only the thermal pad.
- Put everything back together.
The gateway doesn’t change the settings I changed by itself, and it’s survived multiple reboots without crashing.
The adapter board I ordered from AliExpress hasn’t arrived yet, but I found out Amazon has some cheap boards, so I ordered this one, which is what I used: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CLDLC3FL. It isn’t big enough for 5G modems, so you can’t screw it in, but you can just use tape or something to keep the card in place, and it works for AT commands.
Edit: It looks like the network mode resets every reboot to LTE, so I have to run AT+QNWPREFCFG="mode_pref",AUTO to get it back to using 5G.