You say older hardware so just curious if you happen to have an Asus mobo? If we are talking AM4 era, heads up that Asus mobos saw a lot of firmware revisions in 2025 including patches for usb-related issues. I have a b550 board that has been troublesome but seems a bit more stable with the latest firmware.

4/5g card in mPCIE slot until I source a more portable device to do phone things. Yes, there are m.2 options as well. If the supply chain eventually dries up, for expansion cards and/or FOSS phones, then I’ll only communicate via my ISP or local mesh nets, until my computers break.