Archive for the 'Hardware disassembly' Category

Well, it's not particularly an IT device, neither it is contemporary. What's going on then?

I had to fix this VCR of ours because its image quality sometimes got fuzzy. Turned out that a solder joint was broken that connected the tuner plug. The broken joint is easy to see on the relevant picture.

This is one of my ADSL modems, currently unused. Being a modem, this device is not particularly interesting to me despite it can be manipulated through Telnet according to its manual. I've never tried this feature.

This is a typical poor man's wireless router. There is nothing much to say about it but I truly liked how the light of the SMD LEDs are routed to the front side.

This is the home gateway given by my ISP, T-Home Hungary. Despite of this, I was determined enough to disassemble this device and hopefully they won't know about it or else I'll be screwed.

As you can see it's loaded with stuff. As for its purpose, it's supposed to be a router plus a voice-over-IP gateway. Bonus points for the wifi chip being featured on a Mini PCI card. I have only used this beast for a short while before switching to my beloved ASUS WL500GPV2 loaded with OpenWrt.

It's my pretty switch that I use in our family house at Harta. Unfortunately, I couldn't remove the heat sink from the main IC to see its type without destroying it so I didn't. Apart from that, the amount of the power supply and EMI circuitry is rather surprising to me.

This is an ordinary low-end PS/2 mouse. Nothing new under the sun. It's probably a textbook example of a standard PS/2 mouse design.

This is my sister's mouse. Its killer feature is the apparent cable retraction mechanism which I've successfully destroyed during the disassembly. If you disassemble the retraction mechanism and aren't careful enough and apply to much force then you'll also break it so be gentle. Apart from that, this is a pretty ordinary mouse. The rather long distance in which the sensor detects motion is a bit disturbing me. The microswitches are not made by Omron and I don't really think they are top-notch quality. The one-sided PCB is a good cost saving option.

I'm sorry Eszter. I will make it up, I promise.

Update (2010-04-22): I've also disassembled the screen.

I've disassembled my laptop a while ago. The CPU core temperature was pretty high, sometimes above 85 celsius. After disassembling and dusting it the temperature dropped by 20 celsius so the operation was a huge success. High temperature has many side effects like decreased durability, increased power consumption, lower performance and who knows what else.

If you decide to disassemble your laptop then I can promise you few things. First, you'll be challenged as laptops are very highly integrated and if you're coming from the PC world you'll quickly realize that it's a completely different ballgame. Second, it's pretty likely that you'll appreciate your laptop more as you'll be able to see the vast scale of integration and all its components.

As for me, I'm absolutely fascinated by the internal design of laptops. I think these gadgets truly symbolize the level of technological advancedment that humanity has reached so far.

I originally wanted to detail the whole disassembly process but I've realized that it'd take too much of my time. Despite of this I hope that you'll enjoy the show. Let's get some popcorn and let the ultimate geek porn begin.

Let's see some video of the actual dusting.

This hub uses the most popular USB 2.0 hub IC, the GL850G. I'm not sure whether the manufacturer used ultrasonic welding or glue, but this hub cannot be disassembled without significantly damaging the case and I pretty much hate such solutions. USB hubs pose a perfect example of how much additional value an ODM can provide on top of an OEM.

It's interesting how one chip handles 4 types of cards. I wonder whether the various card specs are that similar or whether the IC is that highly integrated.