Tuesday, March 10, 2015
Wednesday, November 26, 2014
[Random Teardowns] Hyundai 30GB USB microdrive
Device: Hyundai Digital 30GB USB microdrive
Origin: DX / China
Reason for teardown: Died
Impressions: Didn't mind the construction of this but it always took over 30 seconds to enumerate on USB. Maybe I should have sent it back immediately but well.. it did work. Until a few days ago.
This thing is essentially a 1" Samsung Spinpoint HU030HA 30GB ZIF/PATA microdrive and a usb interface board with an obscure Moai M110E interface chip.
The Moai chip appears shorted. Maybe I can buy a ZIF interface board to save the data off the drive at least as it still seems functional.
UPDATE 2015/Dec:
The drive works. I bought a PATA ZIF adapter and a PATA USB HDD enclosure so the original owner can use it once more in a slightly (understatement) bigger form factor. Also: one xmas present down.
I believe most chinese PATA ZIF adapters will work fine with these drives.
Origin: DX / China
Reason for teardown: Died
Impressions: Didn't mind the construction of this but it always took over 30 seconds to enumerate on USB. Maybe I should have sent it back immediately but well.. it did work. Until a few days ago.
This thing is essentially a 1" Samsung Spinpoint HU030HA 30GB ZIF/PATA microdrive and a usb interface board with an obscure Moai M110E interface chip.
The Moai chip appears shorted. Maybe I can buy a ZIF interface board to save the data off the drive at least as it still seems functional.
UPDATE 2015/Dec:
The drive works. I bought a PATA ZIF adapter and a PATA USB HDD enclosure so the original owner can use it once more in a slightly (understatement) bigger form factor. Also: one xmas present down.
I believe most chinese PATA ZIF adapters will work fine with these drives.
Monday, November 17, 2014
Lenovo IdeaCentre A600 Restoration - Heatsink and conclusion
Continued from the previous post.
So the heatsinks in this thing were toast. Because the machine no longer used an MXM card I didn't have to worry about that one but the CPU cooler was still a big headache.
After all where am I going to find a replacement heatsink for an obscure all-in-one pc for an affordable price no less?
Do I try and get heatpipes and rebuild the heatsink myself? I really didn't want to..
I found an ID number on the demolished remains of the original and to my surprise, actually found a seller on eBay. A clearing house in China that had no idea what it was for and only had it listed by that obscure model number. Haggled the price down from $60 to $25 for 4 pieces including shipping.
Better than spending hours on bending and soldering heatpipes.
They didn't want to sell me just one so now I have 3 extras.. (Though unlikely, if anyone wants one for the price of shipping, contact me on one of the addresses on the right).
Heatsink issue solved!
I thought about replacing the front glass. I even had a glass pane cut and masked for painting.
But then I realized I despise glossy screens so ended up just painting the plastic frame that I would've glued the glass onto. It works for me.
Installed a T9600 CPU, 8 gigs of ram and 2 SSDs. All of which I got from eBay.
Secondary SSD install:
That cable is also hacked since it originally ended in a micro-SATA connector (which is basically a regular SATA connector combined with a smaller power connector that lacks the 12v rail).
I separated the usable SATA connector with a saw and added a standard full-size power connector in place of the weird one. Thankfully 5 volts is all this SSD needs.
I have to say I'm very happy with the performance and how it turned out overall.
I've been using this machine for the past 5 months (including writing these posts) and it's been rock solid.
I'm glad I managed to save it from the landfill.
So the heatsinks in this thing were toast. Because the machine no longer used an MXM card I didn't have to worry about that one but the CPU cooler was still a big headache.
 | |
| Remnants... |
After all where am I going to find a replacement heatsink for an obscure all-in-one pc for an affordable price no less?
Do I try and get heatpipes and rebuild the heatsink myself? I really didn't want to..
I found an ID number on the demolished remains of the original and to my surprise, actually found a seller on eBay. A clearing house in China that had no idea what it was for and only had it listed by that obscure model number. Haggled the price down from $60 to $25 for 4 pieces including shipping.
Better than spending hours on bending and soldering heatpipes.
They didn't want to sell me just one so now I have 3 extras.. (Though unlikely, if anyone wants one for the price of shipping, contact me on one of the addresses on the right).
Heatsink issue solved!
I thought about replacing the front glass. I even had a glass pane cut and masked for painting.
But then I realized I despise glossy screens so ended up just painting the plastic frame that I would've glued the glass onto. It works for me.
Installed a T9600 CPU, 8 gigs of ram and 2 SSDs. All of which I got from eBay.
Secondary SSD install:
 |
| Professional mounting solution |
That cable is also hacked since it originally ended in a micro-SATA connector (which is basically a regular SATA connector combined with a smaller power connector that lacks the 12v rail).
I separated the usable SATA connector with a saw and added a standard full-size power connector in place of the weird one. Thankfully 5 volts is all this SSD needs.
I have to say I'm very happy with the performance and how it turned out overall.
I've been using this machine for the past 5 months (including writing these posts) and it's been rock solid.
I'm glad I managed to save it from the landfill.
Sunday, November 16, 2014
Lenovo IdeaCentre A600 Restoration - VGA hack
Continued from the previous post.
I'm sure this project is going to seem dated and futile to many. Why fix a past-generation PC and add an obsolete graphics port? What's the point?
The only thing I can say is that I don't actually need anything better than a higher-end Core2Duo and 8 gigs of ram for what I'm doing so I don't mind older gen hardware. It's also cheap.
The 21" display is an upgrade compared to the 19" 4:3 monitors I used before, but I still didn't mind using those that much and I have 2 of them like I mentioned in the first article, one of which still has "fresh" CCFL tubes.
So if I could keep using that one in conjunction with my "new" PC I'd be fine with that even if it's through VGA.
Looking through the schematics of the motherboard I found that it has unpopulated VGA output circuitry that ends in a set of test points.
You can guess where this is going.
A parts order and some hours later here's the (admittedly pretty terrible) result.
In my defense, these passives are 0402 and I used the same soldering guns I showed your earlier with really thin wire for the tips. I'm surprised I managed to maintain my sanity throughout the process and end up with something that actually works.
It took me a while to come up with a good solution for hooking up something to the test points in a way that isn't totally horrible. This is what I ended up with:
Probably could've gotten an FPC connector with pin pitch closer to that of the testpoints but flat flex cable for that was around 5 times the price of this one. Go figure..
On the other end is
It works pretty well even though everything's unshielded.
See the conclusion in the next post.
I'm sure this project is going to seem dated and futile to many. Why fix a past-generation PC and add an obsolete graphics port? What's the point?
The only thing I can say is that I don't actually need anything better than a higher-end Core2Duo and 8 gigs of ram for what I'm doing so I don't mind older gen hardware. It's also cheap.
The 21" display is an upgrade compared to the 19" 4:3 monitors I used before, but I still didn't mind using those that much and I have 2 of them like I mentioned in the first article, one of which still has "fresh" CCFL tubes.
So if I could keep using that one in conjunction with my "new" PC I'd be fine with that even if it's through VGA.
Looking through the schematics of the motherboard I found that it has unpopulated VGA output circuitry that ends in a set of test points.
You can guess where this is going.
A parts order and some hours later here's the (admittedly pretty terrible) result.
In my defense, these passives are 0402 and I used the same soldering guns I showed your earlier with really thin wire for the tips. I'm surprised I managed to maintain my sanity throughout the process and end up with something that actually works.
It took me a while to come up with a good solution for hooking up something to the test points in a way that isn't totally horrible. This is what I ended up with:
 |
| Those final two pins still bother me |
Probably could've gotten an FPC connector with pin pitch closer to that of the testpoints but flat flex cable for that was around 5 times the price of this one. Go figure..
On the other end is
 |
| FPC connector at end of ribbon cable |
It works pretty well even though everything's unshielded.
See the conclusion in the next post.
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