Hardware flaw in NAS320 units

powerSemi

I was supprised to find one of my NAS32 boxes with a flashing HD lite.

It refused to power down on the button. so suspecting external hackingI decided to pull the plug on te power cable. Next day it refused to power up on the button. search for ideas I stumble across the 0day warning

This was even bigger shock, How could it pass my adsl/modem/router firewall setup.

Expecting to have a bricked NAS320 search fpr a quick firmware upload by USB key.

found a faulty package labeled NAS320.tar.bz2  with NAS210.rin by 'Mijzelf.

did a few experiments to tryy and find true cause. Noticed slow fan making a lot of noise.

Had the unit been cooked. remov fan and place it on a motherboard case fan sockerket, use AID64 to check speed. OK with 12Volts it spins at a high speed. not fan fault. did find a lkot of dust on fan, noted surface dimpled not smoth,

like most goofans, so treated it a dose of furniture polish, shine it up.

I tried booting up without Hard drive. It would now start, but still not shut down on the button.

full dismantle to get board out. Full inspection under a magnifying glass.

nothing ovious.checked voltage at fan only 7 to 9 volts.follow voltage from power plug, discover missig Fuse3,

never fitted. bypassed with 0ohm jumpers, design change.check all electolytc caps for leakage.

I happen tyo try soldering a low ESR cap across a small 220uF 25V C3, when I wet the tin on the PCB,

It became clear that C3 had a dry joint, seems the Chinese had used a dirty component, the through hole

had no solderin it. Found the first flaw,inspecting the others found a second dry joint.on cap near the Fan connector. just recently I seam to be plagued with faulty chinese equipment. I dead motherboatrd killed by a faulty remote USB/hard drive box. currently working on 3  dead HP servers, 3 dead power supplies.

all built in china or Tiawan. Th USA make very little these days. It's all been moved to Shenzen or Tiawan or

Vietnam (ASRock) Pcb's.

If you think your NAS box has a start up fault try a quick check before re-flashing firmware.

I this note can spare you the searching I have done in the last 3 days.

warning production lines get bad batches from time to time.

my NAS320 boxes were purchased morethan 10 yars ago.

I work for Philips in the UK, my father came north to Manchester to start a transistor factory

in Hazel Grove.Having been in NY was working with MIT on microwave RADAR, was invited to Bell-Labs saw work by IBM on the new transistor development. Dad bought a first edition of the Handbook on Transistors

rented time on a supercomputer at Lawrence Livermore Laboraties - now the Atomic bomb measurement lab.

Think my father was at theTrinity test site with RADAR, doing measurements to check the rate of expantion.

MY came to Manchester to meet upo wiuth Alan Turin, who was building computers at Manchester Univerity.

I think he wasafter selling them transistors. do you think IBM had Turing murdered?

My father has many US Patents, He designed Power Diodes, Zeners, ASCR's, Triacs, Bipolar Transistors.

when I was tricked into joining the company as a test design engineer. The company was ASM ltd, a joint venture with GEC, they pulled out, Mullard took over control for a short while. when they pulled out Philips BV wanted a company to make transistors for color TV's. The factory went from hand made transistors to large scale production of planar types. We sold off all the metal types. I diod a lot of work on PowerMos anmd inteleghent Powermos. Most of my equipment went to Asia, I spent the last 6 yearworking in china and Philippines.I've seen junk at first hand, not the stuff in Aberdeen harbour.

#NAS_June_2020

ENDLESS

I think it is hard to define if it is a flaw due to the device was purchased more than ten years ago. If the device was just bought for a few days than it might be a flaw. But for a ten-year-old device......it's really hard to tell that just for my opinion.