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GS116eV2 hardware info needed
Dear community, currently I am trying to fix a broken GS116eV2 and am having trouble getting the technical data I need to analyze the fault more closely. I bought it used so I have no purchase receipt or other warranty entitlement, so I'm trying to fix it myself. The issue is that Power lights up normally, but all lights of the 8 rightmost ports are lit dimly, while all lights of the 8 left-side ports stay completely dark. Specificly, I need to know which ICs are mounted on the board (model / designations) so I can get datasheets for them. The problem is that the main ICs (U5, U6 and U7, which are the CPU and PHYs) have tiny heat sinks glued on (quite sloppily, which may or may not have contributed to the fault). I would like to avoid trying to pry these off the chips because there is no 100% safe way of doing so and I don't want to add mechanical damage to the issues. It would also help if you could tell me the intended voltages for the two DC/DC converters on the board (U4 and U11), as well as the required regulation quality / tolerance. Originally, I assumed an electryolytic capacitor to be defective, but it turns out that in the HW v2 these have been replaced by MLCCs and thus should not be prone to drying / leakage. The only electrolytic cap left is a general, 220µF / 25V type for stabilizing the input voltage, which is fully functional as expected. So, I need to dig in further. I see three possible reasons: 1) one or more of U5/6/7 are damaged, preventing the remaining two from working 2) U11 may be outputting a wrong voltage or failing proper regulation (there are periodic rectangular 100mV drops on that line that look like something is trying to come up but fails). 3) the flash (U3, MX253206e) has flipped one or more bits, i.e., damaged firmware Thanks for reading and I hope someone can provide this info!
The SerComm situation does describe things well: Brands like Netgear (and many others, including the big enterprise names - I've fought with Cisco regarding some WAP and SMB routers [lol] back long before the SerComm backdoor vulnerability became public) don't "own" the the internal hardware design for products typically offered in the consumer to small business market. Product differentiation is done by features, enclosures, ports, .... Typical ODM business. Many switch models from different brands are coming from one source, are built on very similar platforms. Many similar models show even the same keywords in the WebUI URLs. So not owning the rights on the hardware design, not even having access to internal design information makes it difficult to help us out here. You realize: I'm not Netgear.
5 Replies
Netgear does not provide internals or hardware service information.
- Well, that is very sad, as these things certainly are no "business secrets" (unless Netgear truly expects their competitors to not be able to buy and open up one of these units). At the very least, I expect that the design is basicly the reference implementation. I suppose the bad security track record of Netgear isn't the only reason why serious networking professionals keep recommending other brands. Anyway, maybe Netgear doesn't want to help, but maybe some helpful community member does? Admittedly, I don't have high hopes on that, given that I found a 2016 thread where somebody asked about something as simple as what the markings on U4 (one of the two switching regulators) are. I would have replied to it because I literally only had to look at the IC, but it has been closed to further comments, so anyone else having the same issue will never receive the info unless they find this thread: it is "IAE JJ".
Mousefinger wrote:
I suppose the bad security track record of Netgear isn't the only reason why serious networking professionals keep recommending other brands.Not sure what relation this has to the subject. Laundry talk here, here we come. What security track record, which products? Serious networking professionals rarely require SMD soldering equipment. Instead, we have hardware maintenance contracts, or manage our and the customer infrastructure devices product lifetime warranty, .... That's why you rarely find queries Which brand in this market does offer hardware service manuals down to the component level please? Cisco? Oh you might not know that all these consumer, SOHO, and SMB products (Cisco's) are made by ODMs nowadays. Why do I mention Cisco? Nobody will be typically fired because they bought Cisco equipment. Appears the Netgear GS116Ev2 is still considered secure enough to spend some effort on it - so a lot of noise for nothing.
Mousefinger wrote:
I would have replied to it because I literally only had to look at the IC, but it has been closed to further comments, so anyone else having the same issue will never receive the info unless they find this thread: it is "IAE JJ".And what exactly is this chip with the IAE JJ marking please? As I'm still maintaining certain services legacy hardware for DEC PDPs, VAX, and DEC (HP) Alpha systems - so some understanding which end of the soldering station iron is the hot one - I'm keen to know.
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