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APC XS-1000 Featured in Takin Apart - 12/26/06

Sadly, another piece of electronic hardware has died. But not to worry, because that just means there is a new installment in the ever-popular Takin' Apart. This time, explore the inner-workings of an APC XS-1000 uninterruptible power supply.

Massive Microsoft Xbox 360 Gallery - 08/05/06

Unfortunately, our Xbox 360 recently was crippled by the dreaded "Red Ring of Death." At first, the 360 would just lock-up with a scrambled image on the screen after playing a game for awhile. It would then refuse to work until it had been powered off for a few minutes - indicating an overheating issue. After taking it apart and applying fans directly to the heatsink (Fan - Apply directly to the heatsink?), the Xbox 360 began to run flawlessly again (evidence once more of an overheating problem). When we put it back into its case without the extra fans, it returned to exhibiting the same lock-ups. Eventually, it just refused to turn on, only diplaying the three red lights. When taking the original console apart, I was amazed to find that very little thermal grease was used on both the CPU and GPU. The GPU had the widely discussed piece of "foil" between it and the heatsink - allowing no thermal grease to contact the actual GPU. The CPU did not have this foil, but had almost no thermal grease between it and the heatsink. I don't know for sure if this caused or even aided the problem, but it is intriguing none the less. This newest gallery in Takin' Apart is packed with 43 pictures of the Xbox 360.

Sun Microsystems Enterprise 420R Server - 04/20/06

Surviving a rough journey with only a few dings, a Sun Microsystems Enterprise 420R Server arrived this week (the cardboard box it was shipped in had ripped apart, and the machine obviously had fallen out of the box a few times - It still runs flawlessly though. Thank you Sun for your rock solid steel cases). It has quad 450MHz processors, dual hard drives, dual power supplies, 4GB of RAM, and weighs over 80 pounds. Of course, something like that can't just come waltzing in this house all willy nilly... it must first be opened up for picture in Takin' Apart. Check out this monster machine!

First Generation iPod Apart - 04/08/06

This morning, after over five years of flawless performance, I thought my original 5GB Apple iPod had finally died. The hard drive would no longer spin up and the screen displayed the dead iPod image. So naturally, I took it apart! My brother had a spare 10GB iPod hard drive lying around, so I tried to use it. I quickly found out that it was just "lying around" for a reason - it too was dead (it made some beautiful sounds while trying to spin up). I replugged my 5GB drive back in and amazingly it worked! Whoa! The lil' bugger just won't die. It's all back together now and working fine, but that didn't stop me from snapping some pictures first. Check out a first generation iPod in Takin' Apart.

PS2 in More Parts! - 11/04/05

One of the most popular set of images in Takin' Apart, are those of the Sony Playstation 2 console. Today, that set has been expanded. I completely took apart my PS2 this week, and snapped some images of it. Now you can see all the way down to the Emotion Engine! Check them out!

Inside a Logitech MX700 - 09/18/05

The latest dissection to be added to Takin' Apart is that of a Logitech MX700 wireless optical mouse. You can see the interesting layered design right here!