Savel brain dump in English!

I am using wireless mouse for several years. Recently I collected some same model spare mice for my experiments. It is low frequency (~27MHz, CB band!) mouse with docking station to charge two AAA batteries. All other specifications are typical. The only annoying thing this this mouse are side buttons programmed to act as “back” and “forward” in internet explorer. Also there is another quite annoying feature- very short time for idle time. Just leave the mouse for minute without moving and it change status to standby. You need to press any button to revive the device.

The radio range is quite short, but who is using mouse in big distances. In my experiments, the max distances was about 3 meters.

Time to open the mouse…
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Today we’ll open quite big Logitech Z-640 sound system sub-woofer. According the specifications:

• Total output power: 70 Watts RMS
• Subwoofer power output: 25 Watts RMS
• Satellite speaker power output: 45 Watts RMS (9 Watts RMS per channel)
• Total peak power: 140 watts
• System frequency response: 35Hz – 20kHz
• Signal-to-noise ratio: >75 dB
• Input impedance: > 5,000 ohms
• Shielded satellites for use near video monitors

Sold locally for about 250…300Ltl.

I am interested only in subwoofer, so satellite speaker are not analyzed. I am interested in subwoofer and audio amplifier. And it looks so cool…

So, grab your screwdriver and tear it apart…
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Let’s look inside Xoro DVD/DivX/Xvid player. I received few HSD 310 for disassembling. HSD 310 is lite version of HSD 415- only additional audio and video outputs installed and 5.1 sound support.

There are less components than in Vido DVD player. Power supply is made from less components and with smaller PCB. I didn’t find any EMI protection inside the PSU, only one capacitor- I think it is mandatory to pass device to EU market. So this device may generate lots of noise to power lines and it may be prone to various interferences from power line.

PSU is made using “green psu” chip DL0165 (Fairchild FSDL0165RN). Max power of this chip is about 13…23W depending on cooling situation. This type of PSU didn’t require to cut off main when not in use, but engineers installed hardware power switch in the front of the player. So you don’t need to pull out power cord when you leave your home for vacation, just press power switch.

The DVD player itself is Chinese brand made- some “Shima industries” product. I can’t tell about the quality of reading. I tested only discarded players. One player is playing almost all my DVDR and CDR disks without any problem. Other device refused to play original audio CD, while playing CDR media without any problems. One device was with small hardware problem- disk fixing unit was unbalanced. I placed washers to their proper places and device is working fine.

The heart of the device is standard ESS Vibrato II CPU/DSP (ES6688FA). I downloaded new firmware from manufacturer’s site and flashed to the player. Just for fun and testing. The flash procedure is very simple- just record new flash file to CD, insert to the player and wait. The more advanced HSD415 mainboard is identical, only all components placed compared to 310 mainboard.

HSD-310 is lite version. This means, that it lacks of component, D-sub (VGA style) RGB output, optical and 5.1 sound output. I connected Trustmaster LCD monitor to RGB output of the DVD player and it work fine. As I have HSD-415 mainboard, maybe in the future I’ll test various combinations of firmware and hardware.

Typical simple digital camera, so called soapbox, is quite expensive (in our country) device and it is carefully handled by user. And nobody opens the camera body just for fun. All digital cameras are quite complicated electronic devices and more, photo-camera with moving objective lenses is quite complicated mechanically. Also, when opening such device at home, always some dust manage to get inside it. I am getting very nervous, when I put last screw to its place and discover horse hair somewhere inside the lenses or behind small LCD…

But I received about twenty damaged digital cameras for testing and now situation is much brighter as circumstances are new: no need to repair, if I damage something- no problem, if I fix it, I can keep it for myself. I have Samsung Digimax A4/401/400/430 and some LG models.

… so the repair procedure is very simple. Test all devices and sort them according damage. Mechanical lenses damage, electronics not responding, bad image due to damage of CCD and etc. Now it is time to make some swapping .

This damage is very simple and very easy to repair:

Just swap LCD with other one and everything is ok. There are more problems with cameras without moving parts. Most of them didn’t switch on. But one was with damaged buttons (need to re-solder one connector) and other was with zebra-like image (the CCD sensor is damaged, or just some leg unsoldered). So these were repaired.

LCD of the camera is LTV180WQ LCD and Casio 5D16BRD…

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From big pile of bad computer stuff I selected three cards to destroy. The selection criteria was a bit strange: the add on card were big and heavy, solid design and maybe expensive.

So, here we have:

Radeon 9800 PRO 128Mb with passive cooling: heat-pipe and double large heat-sink.
Winfast PX6800GT with heatpipe, cooler and double huge heatsinks.
Siluro GF4 Ti4200-8X OTES, 128Mb with turbo cooler, heatpipe and small daughter board.

All card used double card space. Before breaking apart these cards I inserted them to old AGP computer with … DOS. Two cards seams working, third didn’t go to the slots, as seams it is low voltage only version.

Damn, if they work, I need to test them before breaking apart. In fact I selected them to cut the cooling system from them and adapt it for better cooling of my X700 card.

Images from internet:

Today I decided to break apart few video cards. There was box of old nVIDIA and ATI video cards. With various connectors and RAM sizes. Here is the collage from GPU images:

To prove that it is broken apart cards, here it is the small photo of GPUs cut off the cards:

As I remmember the cards were:

ATI: Radeon 9600 XT, R360…
nVIDIA: Geforce FX, FX5700LE, Geforce 6500, Geforce 6600…

The guillotine scissors (tinsnips) cut both manufacturers card in the same way. Maybe it was harder to cut ATI radeon 9600 cards- it was because of the RAM chips placed on both sides of PCB.
The heatsinks were very easy to remove- just place screwdriver under it and pull. Some low power ATI cards with passive heat sinks were glued to GPU. But using strong screwdriver can solve everything- just more strength, and heatsink is flying across the room.

The photo contains only the part of video GPUs I removed. I think I just broke apart card of total $1500 value. And now I feel much better

I didn’t wanted to broke it. Really… I wanted only to bend it and adapt it for heat transportation from video card to computer case body. The heat pipe was manufactured with 180 degrees fold and I wanted to make it 90… The pipe popped and I heard some sucking noise. So, be careful with your pipes

I found few drop of some clear liquid and copper wire strand. I sniffed the liquid- no scent. I even tasted it- no taste at all. And I am still alive. I think, that in this cheap Chinese heat pipe there was simple water. The boiling point was reduced by lowering the pressure inside the pipe.

The heat pipe is working using physical effect that while some liquid boil, the temperature is the same. In the “hot” side of the pipe the liquid is boiled, vapor goes to the “cold” side and condenses releasing all the heat used in boiling. The the liquid goes to the “hot” side. The trick is in that strand of wires. It makes all process independent to the gravity.

The advantage of heat pipes is their great efficiency in transferring heat. They are actually a better heat conductor than an equivalent cross-section of solid copper.

From time to time I smash various hitech stuff. Just for fun and to look inside. So I decided to make special category for it.

The victim of this blog entry is three compact flash size micro drive disks. Each is 2 gigs size.

I removed all stickers and metal shields and now you can see the interior of the disk drive. Just very small hard disk in CF size box. Recent flash rom technology made MD disk useless. Just imagine how this small hard disk spins at 4200 revolutions per minute and you just “drop” your mp3 player of photocamera on the table.