[Eduard] was kind enough to pass along this airport express psu repair how-to (Translated version). The old Airport had those pesky capacitor issues. Apparently the power supply in the little buggers can have issues. The solution? Add a pile of voltage regulators and some smoothing caps to get things powered back up. No word on how the new PSU affects sound output.
6 thoughts on “Airport Express Repair”
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isnt it a bad idea to connect the outputs of voltage regulators together? i mean, once a load is put on them, wouldnt the regulators cease to regulate properly? i’m not saying one way or the other, it seems like this should work just fine, but i’ve had people tell me it will screw up regulation and you’ll get weird voltages, can anyone clarify this??
the way it was explained to me is that one regulator will output more than the other or vice-versa and they will sort of “fight for control” if you will, which will cause all sorts of craziness… though perhaps you could put a load between each regulator and ground, then put your circuit in parallel with that load? i dunno, i’m just speculating — i’m not familiar enough with linear regulators to go that in-depth
either way, it’s fricken cool that it works :)
You’re right, from experience voltage regulators don’t like being treated like that. It would have been easier to just use one for each voltage, less heat would probably be generated.
I prefer this option – http://echoone.com/airport-express/surgery/
i don’t think you should put two voltage regulators together
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after looking around, it seems like confused fishcake is right, simply using one would be better.. even if you’re pulling more than what the regulator is rated for, it’s like most other things: with enuf heatsinking, anything can happen :P
“..No word on how the new PSU affects sound output.” Lineal regulators such as 7805 don’t affect too much to audio signals, they are less “noisy” than switched regulators. So the new power supply shouldn’t affect too much to sound output.