insideGadgets

I originally thought would be a quick teardown but I was wrong, there was a surprise (for me at least) to see an Nvidia chip in this print server as I never knew they made chips other than for video cards and motherboards chipsets.

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So as you’re here you can already tell that we’ve moved our blog to our new domain name www.insidegadets.com, I’m surprised it wasn’t already taken!

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I’ve finally got around to wiring up my 8×8 LED Matrix and now it’s time for some fun with it. Though out playing with this I’ve learnt about shift registers and how we can use them along with a transistor array chip.

First things first, have a read and look through the Arduino’s ShiftOut guide as they are very well put together (keep re-reading it if it doesn’t make sense): http://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/ShiftOut

To summarise the guide:

• A shift register allows you to have 8 outputs while only using 3 pins on the Arduino
• You send a byte to the shift register which has 8 bits (e.g. 10010000)
• You can combine shift registers so instead of having only 8 outputs you can have 16 when using 2, 24 when using 3, and so on
• When combining shift registers, instead of sending out the 8 bits to the first register and 8 to the second register it’s actually reversed, so the first 8 bits you send are actually for the second register and the next 8 bits go to the first register

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Here’s the Netgear DM602 ADSL Modem tear down, at 8 years old so it’s interesting to see how different the PCB looks from the modern router.

First impressions of the board, it’s filled with components everywhere!

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Another teardown, this time the Billion 5100 ADSL Router which is a few years old now, it’s just an “ADSL” router, none of that ADSL2 here.

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It’s been a little while since doing one of these but we have the Motorola Surfboard 5100 Cable Modem which we’ll take apart and it’s fairly old which was built on the 23-Dec-04 according to the PCB, so lets get right to it. Part number seems to be 513682-003-00 and the PCB says 512841-003 Rev A.

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I have with me a Ultra Slim Computer’s power supply which someone claims it made a loud sound and no longer works so I thought I’d rip it apart as I was always curious how it compares to standard computer power supplies that “normal” computers have. This power supply (part number 397747-001 & spare part number 397803-001) is from a HP DC7800 Ultra Slim PC (GV709PA). It’s rated at 135W with 19V @ 7.1A output.

(high resolution picture so you can see all the text)

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Following on from Part 3, our motor controller has been successfully built and tested, now it’s time to release the parts used, where to place them, etc so you can build your own. I’ve actually taken consideration to what I said in Part 3 and have re-designed the Motor Controller to have the components and lines to be spaced out a bit more however I’ve changed the lines back to 0.254mm wide. You have the option of both v1.0 or v1.1 boards, I recommend v1.1 even though it is a little bigger.

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Now it’s time for the part that you and I have been waiting for, the PCB development of this circuit! It sure did take me while to get everything I need for this and a some research on this topic but in the end it all worked out. This is a step by step guide to how to develop your PCB using a collaboration of various resources I’ve found on the net so you should be set to make your own PCB once you have a design after reading this.

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I bet you were expecting to see Part 3 of this build? I’ve recently learned about the important of power dissipation when giving my circuit the real test of 12 volts @ 0.75 Amps and thought I’d share it with you.

In my selection of transistors for the motor controller I went with ones that firstly had a low Vce and then based on price after that; what I didn’t completely take into account is the power dissipation of these components. I know I mentioned it in part 1 however I didn’t completely understand why one of my transistor’s datasheets had 2 values for power dissipation… and now I do, and you will to!

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