OK, I've got everything now. Silly me, I only ordered 1 replacement chip :/ I can buy more but they take a long time to ship of course.
I'm kind of new to soldering. I bought an SMD rework station, but the air gun doesn't really work all that well. I happen to have some SMD breakout boards and a bunch of SMD cmos chips I ordered by accident (meant to get through-hole chips). So I figure I'll practice with that. To get the original chip off, I'm thinking I'll just use solder-wick instead of trying to use the air gun to heat it off the board. Then I'll do my best to mount the new one.
I'm really nervous about this, any tips to help me succeed, other than practice a bunch?
I'm really looking forward to flashing the new firmware on! Also, as I mentioned earlier, I'm a professional software engineer. I'll be happy to contribute any improvements I make to the firmware, assuming I succeed with the hardware mod! Alex, is there anything in particular you think needs work and you aren't actively working on now, or have put on the back-burner?