How to open the hood on this D-Link Ethernet switch?

Dear everyone,

apologies for a question that's more hardware-related than networking related...

I have a D-Link DGS-1216T Ethernet switch, in a 19"/1U chassis - and I'd like to remove the lid off that one. Warranty and my reasons aside - I'm not gonna reverse-engineer anything, nor am I particularly interested what's inside. I'd like to mod my switch a tiny bit - a tiny bit missing to perfection.

The trouble I'm facing is, that the hood seems to be firmly attached to the base part of the chassis, along the upper rear edge - as if spot- welded or glued together. There are some three relevant bolts on the box'es belly, along the front lower edge - but even if I unscrew those, miraculously the two parts of the box stick together along that upper rear edge. Any details on how to gracefully detach that joint would be appreciated :-) An authorised D-Link service center has declined comment, and I'm not gonna brute-force the box open...

Frank Rysanek

Reply to
Frantisek.Rysanek
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not sure exactly, have you tried peeling off any rubbers or stickers to look for more screws?

Flamer

Reply to
die.spam

yes of course, those are the usual tricks :-) This case isn't made of plastic (the usual sort with rubber feet hiding screw heads), it's made of neat steel brass with black paint finish. No stickers on it, no visible hints of fittings riveted or spot-welded on the inside, no more screws... Thanks for your message though :-)

Frank Rysanek

Reply to
Frantisek.Rysanek

Hehe - bought another piece, tried again, and voila - the box is open.

All it took was a little bit more violence. There's a massive spring spot-welded to the hood along the upper rear edge of the chassis, holding onto a flange on the base part of the chassis. After removing the five bolts, just pull the hood forward firmly enough (careful, slowly) to make the spring let go. Wash your hands with some soap to make them squeak-clean against the polished chassis surface :-) You won't make it with sweaty hands.

Careful when putting the hood back on - the SFP slot shields are fragile and you need to align them with the holes in the front panel fairly precisely, while struggling to press the springy clamp back on :-)

On the inside, the box looks like a pretty clean design.

I'm delighted that the PSU and even the onboard step-down switch-mode regulators are the first in the airflow path inside the box, so that they're getting the coolest air. This means that their electrolytic caps will have a long life. I've recently revived several smaller dumb

100meg switches (fanless) by replacing an elyt cap or two (+ some additional tweaks to the ventilation / heatsinks).

The neat Marvell chipset probably explains why there are several similar Web-smart products currently on the market (though they seem to have some slightly different features). The gigabit switch matrix chip provides all the essential features in hardware: 802.1q, 802.1p,

802.1x, flow control (better keep that one turned off).

The control CPU/SoC chip used (88E6218) has caught my eye: an ARM9e core, embedded 100Mbps 6port switch, one of the ports has on-chip PHY. Originally designed for stand-alone use in SoHo routers with an integrated 100Mbps switch. Makes me think that if D-Link added an additional 100Mbps RJ45 socket (WAN uplink port) on the front panel, the box could be firmware-upgraded to include a 100Mb router/firewall for SoHo broadband internet access :-)

Frank Rysanek

Reply to
Frantisek.Rysanek

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