Free PCB builder extraordinaire Kenneth did an extensive teardown of an HP ProCurve 2824 Ethernet Switch. He analyzes the PCB piece by piece, explaining the smaller function blocks and how they fit together. So that is how all of the internals of … Read more
Gelbanana had some free time on his hands and he decided to try and repair an old Weller DS701E soldering-desoldering station he had laying around. The problem was diagnosed to a couple of bad capacitors. After a quick replacement, the … Read more
Presslab tears down the Weller WX 2021 soldering station. He is hunting for the pinout of the front panel serial connector. He was able to identify the serial IC used, and with it the pinout. Via the forum.
Bob picked up a huge LED matrix sign on eBay that has power supply problems. After fixing the power supply, he decided to replace the controler boards with an Arduino. Via Hacked Gadgets.
Mat received his open 7400 contest prize, the Analog Discovery bench tool. He was quick to tear it down and find out how it ticks. The brain of the beast is a Xilinx Spartan-6 FPGA which works in conjunction with … Read more
Arhi tears apart the Voltcraft PS-1305/230 isolated 0-230 volts AC 4.5 Amp power supply. It also comes with a 0-30V 5A, and 5V 3A DC channels. The laboratory power unit is a combination of direct current power unit and safety … Read more
Andrew decided to write up a how-to on DIY BGA soldering. His article describes why it’s a bad idea to keep the vias unfilled with solder before reflow. Capilary force sucks up the ball of solder into the via, and … Read more
Hak8or got his hand on an X-ray bone mineral density assessment machine someone dumped. It seems the only problem is a faulty temperature sensor, but Hak80r decided to break it down and share the pictures with us. For an in-depth … Read more
Kenneth scored two HP universal frequency counters and popped them open. One generates the timebase from an uncompensated oscillator in a TO-5 package, while the other uses a large temperature controlled oven oscillator: here is both of my counters measuring … Read more
Mick bought and disassembled a Tektronix 465 oscilloscope. It’s a 100 MHz dual trace, dual timebase analog scope. He points out that most of the transistors are socketed instead of soldered. More pics below. Via the forum.
Raj has been designing a soldering station that would support Weller’s RT type tips with temperature sensor and heater built into them. A stereo-type jack on the iron connects them to the soldering station cable. So far Raj has reverse … Read more
Victor took apart a defective LCD monitor and repaired it. The LCD didn’t respond at all to the power button, so chances were good something was off in the power supply. Sure enough there was a bulging cap, replacing it … Read more
Schazamp bought a cheap Kendal 852D+ 2+1 hot-air and soldering iron rework tool. He opened it up and took some pictures. Most of the 852-whatever clones look pretty similar inside, there’s probably one factory churning out clones under a bunch … Read more
Hak8or got his hands on a few broken down TVs. One of which is a Dell W3000 set. It’s panel was intact so he figured it was worth to try and fix. After some probing he figured out there was … Read more
Hak80r has been busy disemboweling electronic stuff lately. His latest is a cracked Bravia LCD TV. There’s lots of pictures, users with a slow connections be advised. Via the forum.
EETimes has posted their video of the teardown of the Azio USB 3.0 3.5″ HDD enclosure, one of the first devices using USB 3.0 (4 Gb/sec.), with a street price of about $25 USD.
Today we have teardown photos of a Sure Electronics PICkit2 clone PIC programmer, the type commonly sold on eBay. Scopria, who took these pictures, reports that his programmer stopped working after a few months. He recommends a real Microchip PICkit2 … Read more
PICkit2 is a programmer for Microchip PIC microcontrollers. It has limited debugging features and a low-speed serial protocol analyzer. It’s really useful for low-volume production programming because it can store firmware and program circuits while not attached to a PC. … Read more
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