"My router mod" Epilogue or "Wow, I'm still alive and still have a house"

Well after 3 tries I finally got the Picasa album set up. During the mod, I couldn't find my wife's camera, so I just used my cell phone to take the pictures. The quality of those pictures was somewhat reminiscent of that famous picture of the Loch Ness Monster. I decided that this was unacceptable and decided to make a more diligent effort to find my wife's camera. This involved sitting down on the couch, scanning the immediate vicinity, then asking my wife to find it for me. Bingo! Works every time.

I took apart my router again and took all new pictures using the camera's automatic settings. Of course instead of checking the quality of the photos before putting the router back together, I just assumed that my photography skills would be on par with my computer skills and sewed the thing back up. As it turns out, my photography skills are more akin to my "finding stuff" skills...

Alright, round 3. This time I downloaded the PDF manual for the camera from Cannon's website and read all of the relavent sections. Turns out that the camera's automatic settings are better used for taking scenery snapshots than macro photography. Go figure... This last set of photos turned out pretty good I think (there are still some of the crappy ones from my phone mixed in the album, but only a few).

Take a peek at them and let me know what you think:
http://picasaweb.google.com/JoelslawTTN/RosewillRNXN4RouterFanMod?feat=directlink

I'm still working on the router modding guide to post on Anandtech, but I'll let you know when it's up.

PS - I know you're all sick of hearing about my router, so I promise the next post will be more interesting about something else.

"My router mod" or "How I plan to electrocute myself and burn down my house" Part 3

If you've made it here to part 3: congratulations. You are the first person to ever have read this far. Most people doze off or start drinking heavily near the beginning of part 2 and never quite make it to that "next post" button. But not you. You stuck with it. Now you're on the last leg of this marathon tale and I wish you the best as you strive toward the finish. Unfortunately when you get there, you'll probably just wish you'd given up back with all the drinkers and narcoleptics. Oh well, live and learn.

I took apart the router, which was surprisingly easy. It was kind of disappointing really. Just 4 Phillips screws and a piece of adhesive across the front bezel was holding the two halves together. No screws with weird special-order heads (triangle, star, etc.), no parts that fall off as soon as you open the case and you have no idea where they go, not even any of those sneaky little plastic tabs that you're sure to snap off when you try to release them. You know, all those little booby traps that let us know that manufacturers are serious about all that warranty voiding nonsense. Just, imagine if Indiana Jones had taken that golden head off the pedestal in Raiders of the Lost Ark and ... nothing. No arrows, no boulder, nothing. It was just anti-climactic is all I'm saying.

After looking around and taking some pictures of the innards, I set to work. I decided to use a hole saw to make the hole for the fan. I didn't have one the right size so I had to borrow one from my Dad (Hi Dad! Look, I'm on the Internet!). I didn't want to accidentally drill a hole through my table, so I held the top of the router case in my left hand and used my right hand to drill the hole. I carefully positioned the drill so that when it had cut through the case, my left palm would be there to catch the tip of the drill bit (safety first!). Luckily I managed to get the hole drilled without impaling any of my appendages. After that I drilled 4 pilot holes for the fan screws.

Now I needed to figure out where to solder the fan wires to the router. I could see the 3 solder points on the under side of the mainboard that were connected to the power connector. However, I couldn't figure out: (A) Why there were 3 instead of just two, and (B) which was positive and which was negative. I decided that "eeny-meeny-miney-moe" wasn't the best approach to figure this out and the tongue trick that you use to see if 9 volt batteries are dead didn't really seem like it would be too helpful here either. So, I went out and bought an electrical multi-meter. I used the "continuity test" (which just tells you if 2 points are electrically connected) to find out which solder point was connected to the pin on the power plug and which was connected to the barrel. Oddly enough, 2 of the 3 solder points are connected to the barrel (maybe "eeny-meeny-miney-moe" has a role to be played in this project after all). After that, it was just a matter of looking at the sticker on the power brick which tells you the polarity of the pin and barrel.

Now I was ready to solder the fan wires to the correct solder points on the mainboard. I realized that I was going to need 3 hands for this part of the project and since I don't have 3 hands (hey shut up! that thing growing out of my back is technically a flipper, not a hand!) or cool robots like Tony Stark, I decided to ask my lovely and charming wife for assistance. After some grumbling about wanting no part of my misguided project, I was able to "convince" her (i.e. whine about it till she agreed to do it just to shut me up) to help.

I'm going to go ahead and say I did an awesome job at soldering the wires to the mainboard. You can look at the pictures of the project I'll be posting soon and you can draw whatever conclusion you'd like. Just keep your opinion to yourself though. You wouldn't want to damage my fragile ego would you? :-D

After I completed soldering the wires, I realized I had just done something very stupid. I had not fed the wires through the hole I had drilled in the case... great... So I now had a choice. I could (A) admit my mistake, unsolder the wires, feed them through the hole, and solder them back, or (B) pretend like I did it on purpose, cut the wires in the middle, feed the wires through the case, and then solder the wires together where I had cut them. That way I could tell everybody I did it so if I ever needed to swap fans, I could do it without opening the router again. I, of course, chose option B. However, my dreams of salvaging my mistake were short-lived. After I cut the wires, I immediately set to work soldering them back together, once again forgetting to feed them trough the hole........
I hate me sometimes.......

I would also like to mention here that my wife later told me that she noticed the mistake before I started soldering the wires back together, but didn't say anything because she thought it would be funnier to let me realize what I had done after the fact. What a nice girl she is...

Back to the story. For those of you counting, the score is:
Solder: 2
Joelslaw: 0
But the 3rd times a charm as they say, and I was finally able to bring my problem solving skills up to the level of a trained chimp and get the wires through the hole this time. I soldered them back together and put a piece of electrical tape around each one.

After the soldering fiasco, the rest of the project was cake. I tucked the wires away, screwed Fat Fan McGee to the outside of the case, and put the 2 halves of the case back together.

Now the moment of truth... 3... 2... 1... Yay! I'm still alive!!!

My wife sighed relief and put away the fire extinguisher and broom handle she'd been holding. I moved my newly modded router back to the "nerd cave"(the aptly named dark, hot, and moist half room, hidden under the staircase where my wife forces me to keep all my unsightly gadgets and fake musical instruments with colorful buttons.) and hooked it all up.

That was 5 days ago and so far so good. I can tell a huge difference in the temperature of the router. It's no longer hot to the touch, in fact it is only slightly warm. Only time will tell if it fixes the connection dropping issue but I am hopeful that Fat Fan McGee will do his job.

I'm pretty confident that no one is still reading at this point, but if you are: first things first, go have yourself a drink or two. You deserve it. Second, and this is really the more important part: get a life dude!

A big special "thank you" to the following people who made this mod possible:
My Wife: Thank you for helping me solder and allowing me to neglect you for 2 days while I worked on this project.
My Dad: Thank you for letting me borrow your tools.
ExcaliburMM: Thank you for being the only person who even bothered responding to my post on the Anandtech forums.
And last, but certainly not least, Fat Fan McGee: you really got screwed on this project but thanks for sticking to it *rimshot*

Well, that's it for now. Thanks for reading (or at least attempting to read) about my little project. I am working on putting together a Picasa album for the pictures. I'll let you know when it's done and where to find it. Also, if I can get over myself and stop being butt-hurt that no one at the Anandtech forums answered my post, I'll probably write a guide and post it there, on how to mod your own RNX-N4, if you happen to have one. See you next post (all 4 of you).

"My router mod" or "How I plan to electrocute myself and burn down my house" Part 2

So, I waited for a reply from the Anandtech forums for all of like 4 seconds then decided I would start my mod now and figure out the amperage thing later. I knew at this point that the title of this post was sounding less like a joke and more like a self-fulfilling prophecy, but my impatience spurred me on.

I remembered that I had an old CPU fan/heat sink laying around somewhere. I dug it out and it looked like it would work great for my router mod. I removed the fan from the heat sink and measured it but discovered it was too fat to fit inside the router chassis, as I had planned. I then criticized it about it's weight and told it that no one could ever love a fat fan. It cried for a little bit but then got angry and started to retaliate. This led us into about 45 minutes of yelling, name calling, and exchanging "your momma" jokes. We eventually called a truce and he agreed to take the gig being mounted on the outside of the router. We remain good friends to this day.

I then again remembered the whole amperage issue. What?... you have no idea what I'm talking about? Then maybe you should have read my post on the Anandtech forums like I told you to in part 1. You just always wanna be the rebel don't you? Maybe if you'd follow directions once in a while you'd be up to speed with the rest of the class. Fine, I'll explain. But this is the last time so take notes!

There are 2 power specs on the router:
12 volts
1.25 amps
Still with me? Good, glad to hear it but stop picking your nose.
Fat Fan McGee also has 2 power specs:
12 volts
0.21 amps
So, do you see the problem? That's right! The amperage on the 2 don't match. Gold star for you!

I assumed this was a bad thing, but after Googleing around and finding several articles on DC power (remember, because I didn't wanna wait for an answer in the forums. Don't you ever listen?) I found out the following: voltage always has to match, but amperage is like a pool that each component pulls from. So as long as the amps collectively used by the components don't exceed the total amount of amps in the pool, you're safe.

Confused? Let me illustrate with something that nerd brains are a little more familiar with: RPGs.

So imagine that your character is a level 12 warrior in a game with level specific armor. If you're level 12, you cannot wear level 11 or level 13 armor, you have to wear level 12 armor. That's like voltage. It HAS to match (well unless your plan is to blow something up, then by all means don your rare level 70 "Helmet of Over-volting" and remember to take pictures!).

However, think of the amperage as you're health points. Say you have 125 HP and you encounter a mob that contains a "Router Beast" and a "Fat Fan McGee". The Beast attacks first and deals 100 HP of damage. Ouch! Then the Fat Fan joins in and deals you 21 HP of damage. You've only got 4 HP left, but you're still in the battle right? You then use your special attack that deals crit damage to all enemies. The Router Beast and Fat Fan McGee are both destroyed (and leave behind some sweet loot!). So as long as the damage they collectively deal to you isn't more than your total HP, you live long enough to annihilate them with that sweet special attack.

BTW, I have no idea how much amperage the router consumes out of the total 1.25 so it's probably best to stick with a low amperage fan.

So what was the point of all that? I should be able to use Fat Fan McGee for my router mod without starting any fires. As for whether or not I can avoid electrocuting myself, that remains to be seen.

Now it's time to crack open the Router Beast and see what's inside. Once I do that I should be really close to a level up. I'll let you know how the battle goes in my next post. :-D

"My router mod" or "How I plan to electrocute myself and burn down my house" Part 1

About 9 months ago, I bought a new laptop that has a built in 802.11n wireless card, and of course, being the gadget freak that I am, I decided that that meant I needed an 802.11n router to match, even though my current 802.11g router (a second-hand Netgear WPN824) was working just fine. However, I had serious misgivings about paying 150 bucks for a stinking router. So I waited around till Newegg had a killer sale. The Rosewill RNX-N4 for $80! Yes, I know it was reckless to go with a router from a company that is know for making (pretty nice, IMHO) economically priced PC cases. But the user reviews seemed decent (none of the routers I saw at the time had great ratings), and the price was right, so I jumped in.

Honestly, I have been pretty happy with my purchase. It's got the 802.11n I wanted, 4x gigabit wired ports, and more settings than you can shake a stick at (no seriously, I tried to shake a stick at all of them... just couldn't make it happen). The only problem I really have with it is that, about once every week or two, the router drops all connections and has to be reset to fix the problem. I'm not sure, but I think this is due to overheating, as the case gets pretty hot to the touch. It's not a PlayStation 3 by any means, but pretty hot.

So, I have decided to fix this problem in true nerd fashion: role up my sleeves, make a warranty-voiding modification to the router, and pray it doesn't burst into flames when I plug it back in. My proposed solution is simple: add active cooling. And while adding something sweet like a liquid, or phase change cooling system appeals to the nerd in me, a simple fan appeals to both my wallet, and my your-wife-will-kill-you survival instinct.

Wife/wallet: 1
Nerdiness: 0
Well, at least this way I will live long enough to see my mod through to completion.

Right now I am still in the planning phase. Since my idea is to solder the fan leads right on to the routers power supply, and given that I know next to nothing about electrical engineering, I have decided to consult the geniuses over at the Anandtech.com forums about what type of fan to use. Check out my post here if you're interested.

I would like to mount the fan inside the unit instead of on top of it. Check out the amazing diagram of my plan here. Three hours in Photoshop well spent!

I still need to crack open the case and check out what kind of clearance I have. Obviously, since I'm still sitting here blogging, I haven't yet disconnected the router to do that. I guess I could do that right n....