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Router failure

    Blog entry posted in 'Uncategorised', April 13, 2013.

    I have a 3-yr old Sagem router which had behaved well until the last 6 months or so, when I began getting intermittent on-screen messages saying there was no Internet connection. I thought little of it and put it down to the vagaries of the Internet. Yesterday, however, the failed connection seemed permanent.
    Investigation showed the router trying repeatedly (and unsuccessfully) to reboot, accompanied by arcing sounds from its wall-wart. I had heard these sounds on a few previous occasions but attributed them to mains spikes. Clearly the wall-wart had problems. Replacing it with another got the router behaving properly, with no obvious signs of damage, confirming the fault lay in the wall-wart.
    So, nothing ventured nothing gained and judicious use of a hacksaw and lever soon got the faulty wall-wart casing apart. Nothing inside looked cooked, apart from one of the tinned-copper straps linking the SMPS pcb to the mains plug pins. As soon as I moved it slightly it fell away from the pin, to which it had been riveted by the pin head being peened over. The strap had completely burned away at the rivet, presumably because of a high-resistance 'connection' resulting from poor assembly. No wonder I had had intermittent Internet loss!
    Luckily I was able to solder a wire to the pin head as a replacement for the strap. Wall-wart casing glued back together, power on and IT WORKS :)

    Comments
    fezder, April 13, 2013
    ah, good that you got it back on its feet. so all was ''only'' bad/cracked solder of some sort? :)
    ElectroMaster, April 13, 2013
    Wow, good spotting. Intermittent internet can be a real pain to debug!
    KeepItSimpleStupid, April 14, 2013
    My repeater power supply went south at the same time a neighbor's oven controller died. We are on the same transformer, so I expected a spike did us both in. All my other networking stuff is on a UPS. I took the replace the wallwart option. (5V 2 Amps) I may also decide to backup the repeater, but I really need to have a hidden or very small UPS. A DC UPS may be in the cards. Later this summer, I may upgrade to wireless ac with a not yet released ASUS router. I upgraded from b to g, but not to n or ac yet.
    ()blivion, April 19, 2013
    Righteous repair. I also have one of those offline wall-wart SMPS bricks that's been giving me problems, so you're not alone. Mine is not nearly as dangerous, but it *IS* completely impossible. It doesn't work, but there is no logical reason why. I have taken every single part off of the board and checked them in every way I know. And it all looks great, but doesn't work with them in. So I replaced every single part, tested all the voltages, and all the cables, all the traces. Everything is by the numbers, but still no dice. It's all common and simple parts, very straightforward schematic[URL="http://circuits.datasheetdir.com/66/SCY99051AP-circuits.jpg"][1][/URL]. Even the SMPS chip is just a generic 8 pin dip offline controller. The main switch is a E1300X transistor, that I have a thousand of. Even the transformer is simple with a minimal amount of windings. Really, it couldn't be a more generic and simple offline SMPS design. It just doesn't want to work. Thing is simply cursed or something. As for router/AP, I'm running two bridged WRT54G's (v7) hardmoded with more RAM, and softmodded with DD-WRT micro and the parameters to make it use the extra RAM. I don't recommend this setup for most people, it's not really worth it. Soldering the hundred pin RAM chip in is somewhat difficult. And don't even think about the billion pin flash chip. I can do it, a lot of people on these forums could too, but it is probably impossible for anyone who wasn't born holding a soldering iron. As for software, DD-WRT is really not all that great anyway. Yeah it exposes some "hidden" features. I really like wireless bridging, very useful. But the user support is terrible. You are largely on your own, which compounds the difficulty of nothing working well out of box. Most of the GUI settings don't actually work, so you have to SSH into the router and enter in the commands manually. And even then, if you typo or anything like it, you have to 30/30/30, or worse, JTAG the damn thing and start all over. More of a pain in the butt than it's worth, though the work alone can be fun if you're our kind of people.
 

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