{"id":385,"date":"2008-04-30T18:22:45","date_gmt":"2008-04-30T23:22:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mccambridge.org\/blog\/?p=385"},"modified":"2022-09-11T00:40:39","modified_gmt":"2022-09-11T00:40:39","slug":"howto-fix-a-broken-netgear-gs108","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mccambridge.org\/blog\/2008\/04\/howto-fix-a-broken-netgear-gs108\/","title":{"rendered":"HowTo: Fix a Broken Netgear GS108"},"content":{"rendered":"

About a year and a half ago, I bought myself a Netgear GS108 gigabit switch to upgrade my in-apartment “backbone”. Unfortunately, it gave up the ghost last week, starting slowly flashing its lights on and off, and dropped all the PCs in our apartment off the net. I tried a few things, determined that it was, in fact, the switch that was broken, and took it out of service. Fortunately, just before throwing it out, I tried searching for any similar problems, only to find out this particular model is known for this failure.<\/p>\n

The Problem: A Netgear GS108 is Broken<\/h4>\n
Broken<\/em>, here, means that the switch appears to slowly flash all of its lights, at a rate of maybe once every two seconds. The computers connected to the switch cannot communicate, or at best, are communicating for a fraction of a second, and then report that a cable has been unplugged.<\/p>\n
Under the Hood:<\/strong> This symptom indicates failed capacitors on the GS108’s circuit board. For more information, see the comments on Newegg’s product entry<\/a> (with thanks to the users there who found the problem). If you open your switch up you will see two dark green capacitors with bulging tops (these are broken).<\/p>\n

The Solution: Replace two failed capacitors<\/h4>\n
Supplies<\/h5>\n
\n
Broken GS108<\/li>\n
Phillips Screwdriver<\/li>\n
Two replacement 1000μF capacitors, (at least 10V rating)<\/li>\n
Soldering iron<\/li>\n
[Optional] Hookup wire, heatshrink tubing, electrical tape<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Procedure<\/h5>\n
\n
Begin by unplugging your switch from the wall, removing the power cable from the back, and removing all network cables from the front.<\/li>\n
Open the switch by removing the two small black screws with a Phillips screwdriver.<\/li>\n
Slide the top\/back panel off of the switch by pulling it toward the rear.<\/li>\n
Locate the two dark green 1000μF capacitors and verify that the tops are bulging outward, indicating that this is likely your source of failure.<\/li>\n
Remove the circuit board by unscrewing the four silver screws at its corners with a Phillips screwdriver.<\/li>\n
Desolder the two existing capacitors, being careful not to damage nearby components or burn yourself \ud83d\ude09 <\/li>\n
\n
Solder the two new capacitors in place. Below is roughly how this looked after I replaced mine. (Sorry for the terrible photos… my new camera is arriving sometime this week)<\/p>\n
$\"\"$ <\/a> $\"\"$ <\/a><\/p>\n
For me, the replacement capacitors I was working with were too tall to place vertically, so I ran hookup wire to connect them in place and allow them to lie flat. As a precaution, I used heatshrink tubing on the leads to be sure they were not exposed, and wrapped the sides of the capacitors in electrical tape, as they got a bit nicked by the hacksaw used to harvest them from their previous home…<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
Place the circuit board back in the shell, and replace the 4 silver screws.<\/li>\n
Slide the cover back on and secure with the two black screws.<\/li>\n
For safety’s sake, reconnect just the power first to be sure the switch will power on, before connecting your valuable computers & other devices.<\/li>\n
Reconnect your computers and you’re done.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Disclaimer:<\/h4>\n
This worked well for me, and based on the comments at Newegg, seems to be a common successful fix. BUT, I don’t claim that your broken switch is necessarily plagued by the same problem, nor that this fix will work for you. Also, I am not responsible for the actions you take to fix your switch: be careful with soldering irons, flux, and lead!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
About a year and a half ago, I bought myself a Netgear GS108 gigabit switch to upgrade my in-apartment “backbone”. Unfortunately, it gave up the ghost last week, starting slowly flashing its lights on and off, and dropped all the PCs in our apartment off the net. I tried a few things, determined that it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mccambridge.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mccambridge.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mccambridge.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mccambridge.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mccambridge.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=385"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.mccambridge.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1586,"href":"http:\/\/www.mccambridge.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385\/revisions\/1586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mccambridge.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mccambridge.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mccambridge.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}