Friday, April 29, 2016

Modem repair

The modem broke down a couple days ago and I was wondering what was the issue. I opened up the modem thinking that there would be a burnt component inside but as it was , that wasn't actually the right step. It turned out that it was the adapter that was at fault.

So I had an old one that was like some kind of transformer with various output voltages 3,6, 7.5, 9, 12 being some of them. Adjustments for these adapters are not accurate, for instance the 9V could read 13V.  So a multimeter is needed to find out what is the actual output voltage. It is probably not the best way to solve it but it kind of worked for a while. Then I think it got overheated or something,. As it was rated at 350mA, I thought it was the fault of the lack of currrent as the modem seemed to require 12V, 500 mA. This was not the actual case as I found out later that the adapter was able to output more that 500mA current. (around 1A to be exact).

So I went out a couple of times to get another one. There was an adapter rated at 12V 500mA but I settled for the cheaper solution which was another adapter with the adjustable voltages. As it turned out that did not really work - the reason seemed like the voltage output was just a little too low.  Its 7.5V would read 12.5V. It appears that though the modem was rated at 12V, it actually needed a minimum of around 13V to function properly.

Fortunately I was able to find another old adapter that was able to output around 13.5 V.  It seems to be working fine so far.

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