Replacing the Noisy Fan While I had my LS2 in bits I took the opportunity to replace the fan which was making a lot of noise. I decided against trying to lubricate the original fan because, in my experience, this is usually a short term fix for a sleeve type fan. The original fan was 40mm x 10mm, 12V 3-pin smart fan with ADDA part number: AD0412LX-G76. Research indicated that it could be replaced with almost any equivalent fan. Apparently the LS2 will fail to start if a 3-pin smart fan is not used so watch out! After deciding that buying an equivalent 3-pin fan from outside the UK was not economically viable, I found this:
The Company also has an Ebay store here http://stores.ebay.co.uk/MICROMODS-UK. The cost for the fan was £3.50 (including delivery). When it arrived I found it did not fit into the case properly, but this was easily resolved by making the mounting holes a little bit bigger to fit the locating nodules on the LS2 case. Fitting the new fan was easy, although it did involve a bit of soldering: 1. Check the fan wiring - Red = +12V, Black = Gnd, Other = Sense. 2. Cut off old fan as close to the fan as possible and bare the ends of the wires - about 1cm will do. 3. Cut the excess wire from the new fan. Keep about 10cm of wire and bare the ends - again, about 1cm will do. 4. Solder the appropriate wires together, Red to Red, Black to Black and Other to Other. 5. Insulate the solder joins with tape or sleeving. 6. Re-assemble the LS2 with the new fan mounted so as it blows the air out of the LS2. Upgrading the Network I have always noticed a network performance problem when accessing my LS2 via a 10/100 network hub. In fact the Buffalo Firmware Flasher has always failed when I have tried to use it with the hub. I decided to investigate this and discovered that, when I was attempting to do large file transfers to the LS2, the hub collision indicator was on virtually constantly. I suspect that the LS2 was probably having some sort of duplex issue with the hub. I decided to replace the 10/100 hub with a 10/100 switch and as a result I have got a huge access performance boost when accessing my LS2, especially for large file transfers. Protection From Further Power Cuts I believe that the original cause of my LS2 problems was frequent and repeated power cuts, so I have taken a few steps to minimise further risk: 1. I have now put my LS2 on a UPS. It is only a 12min UPS but that is sufficient to ride out small interruptions and brown outs. 2. I now send my LS2 to sleep between 12.30am to 6.30am (when sods law says most power cuts happen).
And Finally OpenLink v0.52b is built upon stock firmware v2.22. I would like to learn how to put the v2.30 firmware into it...
