So my wireless access point has been crapping out off and on lately, mainly because a house guest was torrenting a few gigs of movies 
So every time my wife's internet dissapears I tell her to power reset it and it's good again. So houseguests leave and all is well 'till I get a call "the internet is down" Me: "power cycle the access point"
Nope, still down. I connect to my Linux server from work and do some pings.
Interesting. All wired devicdes downstairs are up, all wireless devices, and all upstairs wired devices are down..
"I'll fix it when I get home"
I come home, sure enough the upstairs Netgear gigabit switch is toast.
I replace it with a spare 100megabit one and call it a day.
Checking it tonight, the 12v SMPS wall wart is putting out 3v when plugged in to the switch. Inspection of the switch shows nothing obvious, so I crack open the wall wart. Bloated Capxon 470@25.
I replace it, and test. Dead. Hmm..
Get out the loupe, yep, damaged it while cracking it open, or while pulling the bad cap off. A surface mount transistor has shifted ripping a trace. No where near the cap, and not soldering damage, more like I whacked it on somthing. D'oh!
Too tired and blind to do it tonight, will try tomorrow with glasses and light.
Netgear has been my go-to consumer brand since Linksys has always had a high failure rate and Dlink is catching up. Shame a decent unit was crippled by a crap wall-wart. I should pre-emptively fix the downstairs switch I guess.
Maybe I should just power them from a hard drive connecor in the computers...
So every time my wife's internet dissapears I tell her to power reset it and it's good again. So houseguests leave and all is well 'till I get a call "the internet is down" Me: "power cycle the access point"
Nope, still down. I connect to my Linux server from work and do some pings.
Interesting. All wired devicdes downstairs are up, all wireless devices, and all upstairs wired devices are down..
"I'll fix it when I get home"
I come home, sure enough the upstairs Netgear gigabit switch is toast.
I replace it with a spare 100megabit one and call it a day.
Checking it tonight, the 12v SMPS wall wart is putting out 3v when plugged in to the switch. Inspection of the switch shows nothing obvious, so I crack open the wall wart. Bloated Capxon 470@25.
I replace it, and test. Dead. Hmm..
Get out the loupe, yep, damaged it while cracking it open, or while pulling the bad cap off. A surface mount transistor has shifted ripping a trace. No where near the cap, and not soldering damage, more like I whacked it on somthing. D'oh!
Too tired and blind to do it tonight, will try tomorrow with glasses and light.
Netgear has been my go-to consumer brand since Linksys has always had a high failure rate and Dlink is catching up. Shame a decent unit was crippled by a crap wall-wart. I should pre-emptively fix the downstairs switch I guess.
Maybe I should just power them from a hard drive connecor in the computers...
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