The first hardware "Hack"!

Daily Logs • Projects • TalkToMyself • DevOps • Hardware • Hack

August 10, 2019

[Note: This post has pictures that I am intentionally not compressing. Please bear with me for the slow loading. :) ]

A big massive thanks to jasonbraganza for so nicely (and patiently) giving his time, telling me about *lots* of these small astonishing components. 😇

This is for the first time that I have ever opened the cabinet of a machine (that too was done without being noticed though :P ). And this was totally worth doing it. It's like quenching a long held desire to play with hardware and exploring more of it.

Okay, this might not be a big deal for most of the others, but it's something really good for me. So, I find it really necessary to pen down this first experience.

Finally, here I take the first step . . .

I spent like more than 5 hours in the early morning (or midnight) scanning through the official documents of this old Compaq Presario CQ3030IL Desktop PC.

Therefore, this is the first time I am seeing:-

(Disclaimer: It doesn't mean I knew about these beforehand, but now I have read forsure. And there is no particular order of what I am listing down below. These are just for personal note. :) )

• The drive bays.
• Internal hard disk. (Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 (320GB, SATA-300, 16MB Buffer))
• Switching power supply box.
• A 24-pin ATX1 connector (P1 connector) for power supply cables.
• The external Graphics card ( ZOTAC GeForce GT 210 1GB DDR3 )
• CPU fan as well 😅
• And the best part, *the motherboard* (MS-7525 Ver: 1.0 (Boston) ). 😍
• Some of the embedded ICs (Integrated chipsets). [fortunately, I can make out the pin numbers from the motherboard so can read the diagrams well.]
  • The ones I managed to read about.
    • Fintek F71882FG- featured IO chipset (128-pins)
    • Realtek RTM876-665-clock chip (56-pins)
    • Realtek ALC662-VD0-GR, Channel High Definition Audio Codec (48-pins)
    • uP6103S8, Synchronous-Rectified Buck Controller (8-pins)
    • Realtek RTL8101E, Fast ethernet controller. (64-pins)
  • Other ones which I just can see.
    • LM358 PGNV (8-pins)
    • W3391T6 (14-pins)
  • And there are many others, I don't know what they are and what they do.
• The peripheral connectors/ports.
• Central Processing Unit (I can't see it though, but it's under the cpu fan heat sink).
• PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) expansion slots. (One PCI Express x16, Two PCI Express x1, One PCI)
• KTS CR2032 Lithium Battery.
• SATA connectors.
• CMOS reset.
• NorthBridge (Can't make out the SouthBridge sadly. jasonbraganza just [Aug 12, 08:15] told me, Fintek F71882FG serves as the southbridge in this board).
• Two 240-pin DDR2 DIMM sockets (for memory expansion)
• RAM stick (Hynix HYMP125U64CP8-S6 2GB DDR2)
• 2 SATA (serial advanced technology attachment) cables (Golden Bridge AWM E156437 2095 VW-1 80C 300V AWG26)
• 2 USB jumper pins. (JUSB)
• Heat Sinks.

Yeah, these are all the things I managed to see in this first *hack*. I have absolutely nothing to explain about these because I, myself, am seeing these for the first time.

And here are some pictures for my future nostalgia.

(ok, I just decided to compress the images. Because I myself was facing problems uploading them.)

That's all about this post. o/