This is my first post and I want to say thank you to everyone who makes this happen. I have been reading this forum for about a year or so now, and I have really learned a lot so thank you to all of you and the list is so great that I can only mention a few like PB who started this, mwm, goebish, hexfet, HappyHarry, slipstream, Deal57, Cereal_Killer, and so many more that I’m sorry if I did not mention you. It doesn’t mean you are forgotten. I have modded several Devo 7e and a couple of Devo 6s all running deviation without issues. This topic intrigued me so I decided to give it a go. I bought the ST32F103RET6 mcu and the programmer for about $5 dollars each with fast shipping.
I read this whole thread several times before attempting the upgrade. I was trying to decide on how I was going to do it. I end up do what I thought would be the simplest way to do this. I decided to just get down and dirty so I went medieval and cut the chip out. Worked fairly well except for I was a little heavy handed in the beginning, and started out the wrong way. At first I was going to use a very fine set of cutter that i had but I ended up damaging the traces for pins 29 and 30. So I switched to a very sharp exacto knife, but if you do this make sure to use a brand new blade. It only takes a few gentle swipes on each side to cut through the pins and free the chip. I had no plans to reuse the old mcu so this was okay for me.
After having removed the mcu I then cleaned up the pads to prepare for the new chip, and at that time I was not sure if I could make the two pads for pins 29 and 30 work with the new chip. Pin 29 went to a via under the mcu so I removed the LCD display to see where came out at in case I needed to solder the pin to a different location. My plan all along was to hand solder in the new mcu on the board and that proved to be a little more time consuming to do than I had anticipated. Once I tacked the chip down I worked on pins 29 and 30, and I was lucky to get them solder to the traces even though they look a little funny. I proceed to solder the rest of the pins on the chip to the board. Another tip I would suggest is check your work with a microscope if you have one, or access to one. When I did I found that many of the pins were not soldered down. I had tested the chip the first time after soldering in the chip with a DMM, and it seem okay at the time, but I think I was apply enough pressure when taking the readings to make contact. It was only when I checked under a microscope that I saw many of the pins were not soldered down. And one side was so far off center that I had to slightly bend each pin over to reach the pads. Finally I fixed the problems and everything tested good. It did not turn out pretty but I was pretty sure it would work, or I least I was praying it would. You can see in the close up pictures of the mcu how badly off the pins are. Sorry if they are not so clear. I took them through one of the eyepieces of the microscope with my iphone.
Next, I soldered on a header so I could hook up the programmer after which I installed it back temporarily to the case to connect the battery for the programming. To my surprise all went well and I was successful at getting the 256K boot loader installed on the chip. Woohoo! I was stoked the next thing to try was installing the deviation firmware. I went with HappyHarry’s version of deviation 5.0. You can tell by the pictures that I was successful. Along the way I did the range mod, LED mod, 3 in 1 module mod, 2x3-way switches mod, and installed an u.fl connector the stock CYRF module. Now for a bunch or pictures! Hope everyone likes them! And thanks again!
Thinking of adding the pots to my radio next. 
