{"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":"<p>About a year and a half ago, I bought myself a Netgear GS108 gigabit switch to upgrade my in-apartment &#8220;backbone&#8221;.  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<h4>The Problem: A Netgear GS108 is Broken<\/h4>\n<p><em>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<p><strong>Under the Hood:<\/strong> This symptom indicates failed capacitors on the GS108&#8217;s circuit board.  For more information, see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newegg.com\/Product\/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16833122111\">the comments on Newegg&#8217;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<h4>The Solution: Replace two failed capacitors<\/h4>\n<h5>Supplies<\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li>Broken GS108<\/li>\n<li>Phillips Screwdriver<\/li>\n<li>Two replacement 1000&mu;F capacitors, (at least 10V rating)<\/li>\n<li>Soldering iron<\/li>\n<li>[Optional] Hookup wire, heatshrink tubing, electrical tape<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h5>Procedure<\/h5>\n<ol>\n<li>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<li>Open the switch by removing the two small black screws with a Phillips screwdriver.<\/li>\n<li>Slide the top\/back panel off of the switch by pulling it toward the rear.<\/li>\n<li>Locate the two dark green 1000&mu;F capacitors and verify that the tops are bulging outward, indicating that this is likely your source of failure.<\/li>\n<li>Remove the circuit board by unscrewing the four silver screws at its corners with a Phillips screwdriver.<\/li>\n<li>Desolder the two existing capacitors, being careful not to damage nearby components or burn yourself \ud83d\ude09 <\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Solder the two new capacitors in place.  Below is roughly how this looked after I replaced mine.  (Sorry for the terrible photos&#8230; my new camera is arriving sometime this week)<\/p>\n<p><a href='http:\/\/www.mccambridge.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/04\/0429080104.jpg' rel=\"lightbox[gs108]\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.mccambridge.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/04\/0429080104-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"New Capacitors on GS108\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-387\" \/><\/a><a href='http:\/\/www.mccambridge.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/04\/0429080103.jpg' rel=\"lightbox[gs108]\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.mccambridge.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/04\/0429080103-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"Netgear GS108\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" class=\"alignnone size-thumbnail wp-image-386\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>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&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>Place the circuit board back in the shell, and replace the 4 silver screws.<\/li>\n<li>Slide the cover back on and secure with the two black screws.<\/li>\n<li>For safety&#8217;s sake, reconnect just the power first to be sure the switch will power on, before connecting your valuable computers &#038; other devices.<\/li>\n<li>Reconnect your computers and you&#8217;re done.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h4>Disclaimer:<\/h4>\n<p>This worked well for me, and based on the comments at Newegg, seems to be a common successful fix.  BUT, I don&#8217;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":"<p>About a year and a half ago, I bought myself a Netgear GS108 gigabit switch to upgrade my in-apartment &#8220;backbone&#8221;. 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 [&hellip;]<\/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}]}}