Neuros Forums

Better workmanship please

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Topic URL: http://www.neurosaudio.com/community/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=6234
Printed on: 01/04/2007

Topic:

Topic author: watrgate
Subject: Better workmanship please
Posted on: 06/13/2005 8:01:17 PM
Message:

I recently had occasion to open the case on my NII to troubleshoot a power problem. I found something rather disturbing:

http://www.watrgate.com/odds-n-solds.jpg

Could somebody at Neuros explain the Frankenstein resistor in the picture? I bought my NII back in early 2004 so perhaps this was Neuros' (or it's supplier) way to meet demand when the USB 2.0 units first rolled-out. But please tell me this seat-of-the-pants engineering has been cleaned up.

Chuck

Replies:

Reply author: Derek
Replied on: 06/16/2005 10:13:03 PM
Message:

Is your unit working....if it does, dont complain...you werent supposed to open it anyway. Looks like a damn good solder joint to me.

When I was a kid my mom used to tell me that curiosity killed the cat...What she forgot to tell me was that it also discovered the cat, invented the lightbulb, and forged the Neuros

Reply author: hal
Replied on: 06/17/2005 03:34:25 AM
Message:

quote:
Originally posted by watrgate

I recently had occasion to open the case on my NII to troubleshoot a power problem. I found something rather disturbing:

http://www.watrgate.com/odds-n-solds.jpg

I too have the resistor tacked into my USB2 upgrade backpack. Mine failed last week, and I opened it to attempt repairs. This is a common practice. In the case of my unit, the 22 uF capacitor (to which one end of the resistor is soldered) was getting excessively hot on charging (which capacitors are NOT supposed to do) so I replaced it. Now when the N1 'Brain' is inserted, it tried to come up, whereas when it failed, it would only flash once when plugged in.

All is still not right though, because the 'brain' apparently suffers from an inability to write to flash (repeated attempts to recover bad blocks and format seem to complete, but the /music directory cannot be created). The dreaded 0x4840 error comes up with both the battery pack and the USB2 20GB backpack.

Hal

Reply author: watrgate
Replied on: 06/24/2005 06:12:11 AM
Message:

Thanks for your $.02 but I was looking for a response from Neuros.

Sorry but that component and it's connections are garbage. Any mass-produced consumer electronic device should not contain this kind of hardware hack. I suspect that I was shipped one of their beta prototype units which had to be reworked after initial testing. I posted because I wanted them to reassure me that they don't do this anymore.

As for curiosity, I'm well within my rights to open my Neuros. You can learn quite a bit by looking under the hood. And besides, Neuros has been pretty cool about people wanting to mod their units (if not on an official basis). If you would rather not poke around yours that's your business.

Reply author: watrgate
Replied on: 06/24/2005 06:13:47 AM
Message:

Just wanted to say that my previous reply was to pedersdd's post.

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