I had a first generation Linksys/Cisco SD2008 8 port 10/100/1000M switch which was purchased a few years ago. It became faulty in 2008, I opened it up and discovered that some capacitors were blown. I replaced them and it worked fine. I used it a couple of times and cold storaged it after I received an ASUS GigaX 1108N from a friend(Yeah I like new things especially when they are white in color). Lately after wiring up my rooms with Giga network I found that I only had 1 port in my working room(I work from home and regularly used 2 PCs at a time). I didn't want to use WIFI because I always have video and audio calls thru the PC. So I re-animated my Linksys switch. Just to double check and also my itchy fingers I opened up the unit and here is what I found.
The freaking capacitors that I didn't change(it looked OK when I opened it the first time and changed the ones that were blown) were about to go too... look at the left 2 capacitors, they looked pregnant. The ones on the right were changed the last time.
So I had to take out my trusty old soldering iron and changed them to new ones. I had some spare capacitors at home(actually I have tons of them cataloged exactly like an electronics component shop... Yup I am a real sicko...), else I have to wait till I get back from Jakarta the week after. So here is the result...
I didn't realized that I still had it in me to desolder and resolder stuffs, have not been doing it for quite awhile now...:) So all changed... Just before I put everything back together I was skeptical on why the capacitors blew or was about to blow. Checked on the net a bit and it all pointed to the heat issue with the SD2008 first generation switches. I got creative and started to look for a used CPU fan... found a standard AMD one laying around, unused. Decided to retro fit it to the SD2008. Here goes...
Cut the fan ventilation hole first... and drilled the mounting holes.
Screwed up a bit, forgot to protect the surface and got the cover all scratched up. Ahhh.. what the heck it's going to be hidden anyway.
Fitted the fan....
Everything looks great until I switched it on... freaking loud... sounds more like a server to me... SHIT!!! I can't work with the noise, so i took out a 7809 voltage regulator IC and soldered it direct to the fan power cable. The 7809 regulated the 12Volt down to 9Volt, so the fan ran slower and quieter.
So here it is... running and fitted under my table.
There all done... all within 2 hours and while the kids are asleep...
Stay tune for more mods and projects coming up....
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