This is a device to use an IDE or SATA interface drive via a USB connection. Here is the front of the device, IDE interface at the bottom, 2.5″ form factor.
PCB removed from the casing. USB cable exits the top, 12v DC power jack to the left.
SATA interface below the DC Jack.
Molex connector below SATA is the power output for the drive in use. This unit has a built in 5v regulator.
Bottom of the PCB showing the interface IC.
Adaptor to plug into the 44-pin 2.5″ form factor IDE interface on the adaptor, converts to standard 40-pin 3.5″ IDE.
Power pigtail with standard Molex & SATA power plugs.
Here is a Sanyo tape recorder, with built in voice activation. Takes standard audio cassettes.
Here visible is the speaker on the left, microphone is on the right of the tape window. The tape counter is at the top.
Back cover removed from the unit, showing the PCB & the connections. The IC is the controller/amplifier.
Top of the PCB, control switches, volume potentiometer & microphone/headphone sockets on the right. DC power jack top left. Switch bottom centre senses what mode the tape drive is in.
Rear of the tape deck, main drive motor is bottom right, driving the capstan through a drive belt. This drives the tape spools through a series of gears & clutches. Belt going to top left drives the tape counter.
Front of the tape drive. Read/write head is top centre. Blue head is bulk erase head used during recording.
Here is a cheap no frills microwave oven, which died after a few weeks of normal use.
Cover removed, showing the internals. Front of the microwave is on the left.
Closeup of the timer unit. Cheap & nasty.
Magnetron removed from the oven. Antenna is on the top, cooling fins visible in the center. White conector at the bottom is the filament terminals.
Chokes on the magnetron’s filament connections. These prevent microwave energy from feeding back into the electronics bay through the connections.
Magnetron cooling fins, tube & magnets removed from the frame.
Bare magnetron tube.
This PCB does some rudimentary power conditioning, power resistors are in series with the live feed to the power trasformer, to prevent huge power up surge. When the transformer energizes the relay, which is in parallel with the resistors, switches them out a fraction of a second after, providing full power to the transformer.
Standard RFI choke & capacitor at the top of the board, with the input resistor.
Power transformer to supply the magnetron with high voltage.
Power output is ~2kV at ~0.5A. Pair of spade terminals are the low voltage filament winding.
HV Capacitor. This along with the diode form a voltage doubler, to provide the magnetron with ~4kV DC.
HV diode stack.
Internals of the HV fuse. Rated for ~0.75A at 5kV. The fuse element is barely visible attached to the end of the spring. Connects between the transformer & the capacitor.
Cooling fan for the magnetron. Drive is cheap shaded pole motor.
Here is a cheap no brand hot laminator. This pulls the paper, inside a plastic pouch through a pair of heated rollers to seal it.
Top removed, heater assembly visible. PCB attached to the top cover holds LEDs to indicate power & ready status.
Here is the thermostat & thermal fuse, the thermostat switching the indicator on the front panel to tell the user when the unit is up to temperature. This has a self regulating thermostat. Thermal fuse inside the heat resistant tubing is to protect against any failure of the heater.
5 RPM motor that turns the rollers through a simple gear system.
Cheap unbranded window break alarm. Here is the front of the unit, with the sounder at the top, Power/sensitivity switch at the right. Battery test button at the left.
Rear of the device, with the adhesive pad used to attach it to a window.
Front cover removed, showing the batteries, PCB & the sounder.
PCB removed from the casing, showing the remaining components.
This is an old CO alarm, which was totally dead, having been connected to the wrong PSU.
Here is the front of the unit, with the Test button & indicator LEDs.
Front of the PCB, 3 1.5v cells powered the unit, Piezo sounder & sensor cell in the centre of the board.
This is the hydraulic system from an Audi TT that would power the soft top. Here is the hydraulic pump unit. Oil Tank is on the left. Power is 12v DC at ~20A
The pair of hydraulic cylinders that attached to the roof mechanism.
One of the cylinders has a limit switch built in. The brass bolt coming out of the side of the head is one contact. The other contact is the cylinder body.
Marking on the hoses. This is Parker Polyflex hydraulic hose. 1/8″ ID.
Drive motor for the hydraulic pump. Standard DC permanent magnet motor.
Motor power terminals & suppression capacitors. As the reversing relays actually short the motor out when de-energized, there is a lot of arcing at the brushes without some suppression.
Reversing relay stack. Each relay is a SPDT configuration. The pair are arranged as a DPDT bank to reverse the motor, depending on which relay is energized.
Detail of the oil tank showing the level markings.
Solenoid valve on top of the unit. This valve provides full pump pressure to the cylinders when energized.
An early speed radar detector from the early 90’s. Pictures showing the front of the unit with the option buttons.
Bottom of the unit showing label. Unlike the newer plastic detectors, the whole casing of this unit is cast aluminium.
Model Uniden Stalker RD-6000W.
PCB removed from the casing. Volume/power control on the left. Option tactile switches on the edge of the PCB, with the indicator LEDs. Power input jack on the right hand side of the PCB. Large aluminium can is the detector assembly, containing the detector diodes. Waveguide horn is at the top.
Shot down the waveguide, showing the detector diodes at the end.
Indicators on the front of the unit, X, K & Ka band detection LEDs on the left, Power & detection level (1-4) LEDs in centre. City (C) (Audio (A) & Mute (M) LEDs on the right.
Bottom of the PCB, showing detection logic. Piezo buzzer top left.
Here is a cheapo 500W rated ATX PSU that has totally borked itself, probably due to the unit NOT actually being capable of 500W. All 3 of the switching transistors were shorted, causing the ensuing carnage:
Here is the AC input to the PCB. Note the vapourised element inside the input fuse on the left. There is no PFC/filtering built into this supply, being as cheap as it is links have been installed in place of the RFI chokes.
Main filter capacitors & bridge rectifier diodes. PCB shows signs of excessive heating.
Filter capacitors have been removed from the PCB here, showing some cooked components. Resistor & diode next to the heatsink are the in the biasing network for the main switching transistors.
Heatsink has been removed, note the remaining pin from one of the switching transistors still attached to the PCB & not the transistor 🙂
Output side of the PSU, with heatsink removed. Main transformer on the right, transformers centre & left are the 5vSB transformer & feedback transformer.
Output side of the unit, filter capacitors, choke & rectifier diodes are visible here attached to their heatsink.
Comparator IC that deals with regulation of the outputs & overvoltage protection.
For those that are interested, here is the ID label, this is a PSP-2003.
Here the front of the unit has been removed, showing the first internal components.
Here is the unit with the LCD removed, here the mainboard is partially visible.
Left pad unit removed from the PSP, with the left speaker & the memory stick slot cover.
Rear of the left pad assembly, showing the speaker.
Joypad removed from the casing. Resistive unit.
Headphone/data board removed from the casing. This also has TV-Out on the PSP-200x series.
Mainboard removed. Main CPU is at the top. Sockets around the bottom connect to the UMD drive & UMD Drive.
Closeup of the main chipset. CPU is the top IC.
Rear of the mainboard, Memory Stick socket on the right.
Closeup of the WiFi chipset & the charging power socket on the right.
Closeup of the bettery connector & the charge controller IC.
UMD Drive removed from the rear of the casing. This is a miniature DVD style drive, using a 635nm visible red laser.
Rear of the UMD drive, showing the laser sled & drive motors. Both the spindle motor & the sled motor are 3-phase brushless type. The laser diode/photodiode array is at the top of the laser sled.
This is an old cordless landline phone, with dead handset batteries.
Here’s the handset with the back removed. Shown is the radio TX/RX board, underneath is the keyboard PCB with the speaker & mic. All the FM radio tuning coils are visible & a LT450GW electromechanical filter.
Radio PCB removed from the housing showing the main CPU controlling the unit, a Motorola MC13109FB.
The keypad PCB, with also holds the microphone & speaker.
Bottom of the keypad board, which holds a LSC526534DW 8-Bit µC & a AT93C46R serial EEPROM for phone number storage.
Here’s the base unit with it’s top cover removed. Black square object on far right of image is the microphone for intercom use, power supply section is top left, phone interface bottom left, FM radio is centre. Battery snap for power backup is bottom right.
PSU section of the board on the left here, 9v AC input socket at the bottom, with bridge rectifier diodes & main filter capacitor above. Two green transformers on the right are for audio impedance matching. Another LT450GW filter is visible at the top, part of the base unit FM transceiver.
Another 8-bit µC, this time a LSC526535P, paired with another AT93C46 EEPROM. Blue blob is 3.58MHz crystal resonator for the MCU clock. The SEC IC is a KS58015 4-bit binary to DTMF dialer IC. This is controlled by the µC.
Underside of the base unit Main PCB, showing the matching MC13109FB IC for the radio functions.
This is a little security measure you get with Internet Banking with the Co-Op, generates codes to confirm your identity using your bank card. About the size of a pocket calculator, this is the keypad & screen.
The rear of the unit, the card slots into the top, manufactured by Gemalto Digital Security.
Outer back cover removed, showing the 8 contacts for the chip on the bank card, the 2 contacts below that switch on power when a card is inserted. Power comes from 2 lithium coin cells in the compartment on the lower left.
PCB removed from the casing, showing the internal components. Two large pads at top left are battery connections, while the only IC on the board is the main CPU, under the card connector. 6MHz oscillator & 32Khz crystal on board for processing & timekeeping. LCD screen connection at far right.
Reverse side of the PCB, with the keypad contacts. LCD on right, with programming interface pads at side of keypad.
Here is a Bosch 14.4v Professional cordless drill/driver, recovered from a skip!
It was thrown away due to a gearbox fault, which was easy to rectify.
Here is the drill with the side cover removed, showing it’s internal parts. The speed controller is below the motor & gearbox here. The unit at the top consists of a 12v DC motor, coupled to a 4-stage epicyclic gearbox unit, from which can be selected 2 different ratios, by way of the lever in the centre of the box. This disables one of the gear stages. There is a torque control clutch at the chuck end of the gearbox, this was faulty when found.
Here is the drive motor disconnected from the gearbox, having a bayonet fitting on the drive end.
This is the primary drive gear of the motor, which connects with the gearbox.
The motor is cooled by this fan inside next to the commutator, drawing air over the windings.
This is the gearbox partially disassembled, showing the 1st & second stages of the geartrain. The second stage provides the 2 different drive ratios by having the annulus slide over the entire gearset, disabling it entirely, in high gear. The annulus gears are a potential weak point in this gearbox, as they are made from plastic, with all other gears being made of steel.
Here is the charging unit for the Ni-Cd battery packs supplied with the drill. The only indicator is the LED shown here on the front of the unit, which flashes while charging, & comes on solid when charging is complete. Charge termination is by way of temperature monitoring.
Here the bottom of the charger has been removed, showing the internal parts. An 18v transformer supplies power to the charger PCB on the left.
This is the charger PCB, with a ST Microelectronics controller IC marked 6HKB07501758. I cannot find any information about this chip.
Here is a battery pack with the top removed, showing the cells.
This is the temperature sensor embedded inside the battery pack that is used by the charger to determine when charging is complete.
This is an old USB 1.1 hub that was recently retired from service on some servers. Top of the unit visible here.
Bottom label shows that this is a model F5U021 hub, a rather old unit.
PCB is here removed from the casing, Indicator LEDs along the bottom edge of the board, power supply is on the left. Connectors on the top edge are external power, USB host, & the 4 USB outputs. Yellow devices are polyswitch fuses for the 500mA at 5v each port must supply.
This is the USB Hub Controller IC, which is a Texas Instruments TUSB2046B device. Power filter capacitors next to the USB ports are visible here also, along with 2 of the polyswitches.
The power supply section of the unit, which supplies regulated 5v to the ports, while supplying regulated 3.3v to the hub controller IC. Large TO-220 IC is the 5v regulator. Smaller IC just under the power selector switch is the 3.3v regulator for the hub IC. The switch selects between Host powered or external power for the hub.
This is a device designed to reset Epson brand ink cartridges that are reportedly out of ink, so they again report full to the printer Here is the front of the unit, with the guide for attaching to a cartridge.
Back of the device removed. 3 button cells provide power to the PCB. Indicator LED sticks out of the top of the device for reset confirmation.
Row of pads on far left edge of the PCB are presumably a programming header for the uC on the other side of the board.
Here is the front of the PCB, main feature being the grid of pogo pins to connect to the cartridge chip. IC on lower right of that is a MSP430F2131 uController, a Texas Instruments part.
The IC directly to the left of the pogo pin bed is a voltage regulator, to step down the ~4.5v of the batteries down to the ~3.3v that the uC requires.
Here is a more modern phone, the Motorola V360v. Features include Dual screens, 640×480 VGA camera, full col
our TFT Main LCD, SD-Micro slot.
Here on the back the grey scale LCD can be seen, with the camera lens to the right of the Motorola logo
Here the phone is opened showing the keypad & the full colour TFT LCD display.
Here the battery is removed from the unit, showing the SIM connector. The antenna cover is still on at the bottom.
The antenna cover has been removed in this shot, the antenna is the white section at the bottom, With the loudspeaker & the external antenna connector hidden at the right.
Here is the main PCB. Parts from left are the Bluetooth module at the top, supplied by Broadcom, the SD Card socket at the bottom. Main CPU next to that is the Freescale SC29343VKP. Above right of the CPU is the Freescale SC13890P23A Charger, Power & Audio IC. Below is the SIM card socket. Under the main CPU is the Intel Flash memory IC. ICs inside the shields are the RF sections for transmit & receive.
Rear of the display unit showing the monochrome LCD. The camera module on the bottom left. Ear speaker on the far right of the unit.
Main colour TFT LCD.
Camera module removed from the LCD unit.
The vibration motor attached to one of the LCD looms.
Another phone from the mid 90s. This is the nokia 7110.
Here the slider is open showing the keypad.
Here the battery is removed, a Li-Ion unit.
The battery cell & protection circuit removed from the casing.
This is the rear of the PCB removed from the housing. Data & charging ports on the right hand side f the board.
Front of the PCB with the RF sections at the left hand side & the keypad contacts on the right.
Closeup of the RF sections of the board, big silver rectangular cans are VCO units.
Closeup of the top rear section of the PCB, with SIM cnnector, battery contacts, IR tranciever at the far left. Bottom centre is the external antenna connector.
The logic section of the board, Large chip is CPU, to right of that is the ROM storing the machine code. Other chips are unknown custom parts.
The Mic & the loudspeaker removed from it’s housing.
LCD from the front of the unit, SPI interfaced. Flex PCB also contains the power button, loudspeaker contacts & a temperature sensor.
The scroll wheel removed from the front housing.
Tiny vibration motor removed from the rear housing, alerts the user to a text or phone call.
Here we have a Dremel MultiPro rotary tool, a main powered 125W 33,000RPM bit of kit.
Here the field & controller assembly is removed from the casing.
Here is the armature, which rotates at up to 33,000RPM. The brushes rise against the commutator on the left, next to the bearing, the cooling fan is on the right hand side on the power output shaft, the chuck attaches at the far right end of the shaft.
Here is the speed controller unit, inside is an SCR phase angle speed controller, to vary the speed of the motor from 10,000RPM to the full rated speed of 33,000RPM.
This is the mains filter on the input to the unit, stops stray RF from the motor being radiated down the mains cable.
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