Posted in Teardowns on Nov 28th, 2013
Today we’ll be taking a look at the Cisco Small Business Pro SRP527W ADSL2+ Wireless Router which has 4 LAN ports and 2 phone ports for VOIP. We have taken a look at another Cisco router so I’m expecting to see a few of the same parts.
Four screws later and we’re in.
First off, there are quite a few SMPS (SC4525A) around the board and a few large capacitors too, on the last Cisco router we saw none of these 25V 1500uF capacitors. The Wifi module is much smaller, has a proper u.FL connector and there is attention to detail to keep the Wifi antenna wire in place by having the small plastic holder on top of the LAN ports. There is a 8.192 crystal oscillator on board along with 2x 25MHz and a 64MHz crystal.
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Posted in Teardowns on Oct 26th, 2013
Today we’ll be taking a look at the Netgear ReadyNAS NV RND4410 NAS (version 1) which was released back in 2007, has 4 drive bays, front LCD, gigabit ethernet and 3 USB ports. This particular unit wouldn’t power on anymore.
Quite a bit of screws later and we’re in.
It’s a fairly modular design (I took the power supply out beforehand). We have the LCD connector running up to the top of the case, the memory module up top. The backplane has a standard ATX power connector has PCI connector to connect it to the main board; the main board can easily slide out.
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Posted in Teardowns on Oct 6th, 2013
It’s time for a teardown, this time we have a Kodak EasyShare CX4200 2MP Digital Camera which was manufactured in 2002 so it’s now 11 years old!
A few screws later and we’re in.
We’ve got the top side which has the AA battery, flash and camera and bottom side which has a Casio LCD. It’s a two board construction with a small interface board just below the CCD.
Main board – top side
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Posted in Teardowns on Jul 31st, 2013
Today we’ll be briefly looking at an old Philips 29″ CRT TV (29SX8771/75R). We’ve had this TV for at least 10+ years and I’ve been told that it cost $2,000 back in the day. The image has degraded a bit so instead of throwing this out, we’ll take it apart and harvest the parts.
Quite a lot of screws later and we’re in; there was 4 speakers which I took out for parts.
It’s very dusty, you can see the main board and the CRT with electron gun. I discharged the CRT by hooking up the plug coming from the CRT (anode) to ground.
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Posted in Teardowns on Jul 21st, 2013
Today we’ll be looking the Cisco WAP200 Wireless-G AP with PoE and RangeBooster which as it implies is a 802.11g access point that can be powered from PoE.
Four screws later and we’re in.
We’ve got the processor, flash, RAM and an add-on Wifi card.
A few things worth mentioning which isn’t really standard – the Wifi add-on card is soldered on to the socket so it doesn’t come out. The external shield of both crystals are soldered down. Both antennas are directly soldered to the Wifi add-on card.
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Posted in Teardowns on Jul 2nd, 2013
Just a quick teardown today, we have the Kingston 60GB SSDNow300 SSD with model code SV300S37A/60G.
One problem with this SSD are the screws, they are the security torx screws which I didn’t have any screwdrivers available for. Somehow using a small flathead I was able to break off the middle pin so I can now access it using it regular torx screwdriver.
We’re in and there isn’t a whole lot, just 8x NAND chips and the memory controller.
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Posted in Teardowns on Jun 17th, 2013
It’s been a while since I’ve done a teardown, I have a few modems/routers in the ‘waiting to teardown pile’. Today we have the Netcomm NB5 Rev2 ADSL Modem Router.
The PCB has a date code of 0713 so 13th week of 2007. You can tell it’s fairly old because it has an AC input instead of a DC input. They’ve put the SMD parts very nicely grouped together on the bottom left and not a lot of chips as you would expect for an old modem.
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Posted in Teardowns on Mar 3rd, 2013
Today we’ll be looking at the Belkin F7D4501 ScreenCast TV Adapter which allows you to transmit your laptop’s screen to your TV, the downside is it only supports laptops that have Intel’s WiDi. I don’t have a laptop that supports this, so only thing we can do is take it apart!
4 screws later and we’re in.
We have shielding on the front and back, 2 antennas and it appears there is a USB wireless dongle that’s plugged in which connects to the board – not something I was expecting to see. I plugged in the USB dongle to my computer and seems to be detected as a 802.11n WLAN.
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Posted in Teardowns on Jan 25th, 2013
Today we’ll be looking an Alcatel Lucent 9361 Home Cell V2 which is used as a small base station to provide your mobile phone with better reception.
A few notches later and we’re in, no screws needed to be removed but it was a bit of a pain to get in.
When you pick up the board it’s a bit heavy compared to other PCBs and straight up we can see 2 metal covers which is what you’d see in mobile phones. There is also a plastic cover as well which is a little strange. On the back of the board we can see that we have some metal blocks and an unpopulated section at the top left, maybe for a micro SD card slot?
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Posted in Teardowns on Dec 15th, 2012
Just a quick teardown today, we’ll be looking at the Tenda 8 Port Fast Ethernet Switch – I’ve never heard of this manufacturer before.
2 screws later and we’re in.
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