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Modem fixed

Oh the trials and tribulations of fixing ones own electronics.

Having purchased $10 worth on new capacitors from RS components yesterday, today i finally was able to remove the old ones and put the new one in.

The tricky bit was removing the solder from the holes where the old capacitors were. Unfortunatley my lack of experience resulted in one of the hole fill with solder and my iron could not melt it all again to be able to suck it out with a solder sucker. In the end I resorted to a 0.6mm fine drill and a steady hand to drill the solder from the hole on about 5 holes in the end.

It would appear its worked well with good up and down speeds. Amazing.

I’ll see how it goes tonight, I’m worried I will wake to a molten plastic mess.

Posted on

Modem problem

If anyone has noticed, I’ve had dramas with my connection over the last week or so. My trusty old Speedtouch 536 finally died. I opened it up and the capacitors have all bulged or leaked or both.

I was lucky enough to borrow a modem off a friend, unfortunately I didn’t read the manual when I plugged it in and some of the settings were wrong resulting in it dropping off all the time. Fixed it last night, nice and stable now.

I’m looking at getting a Cisco modem and using the 536 as a backup (after I replace the capacitors).