CQ Amateur Radio

the ham notebook

Well, it’s back to the workbench once again. This time, some projects made their way to my bench unexpectedly. These are the projects that often make me mad.

For example, my fairly new docking station for my new computer dual-monitor setup stopped working. It just lost power and connection to my external monitors and USB items. It made that “disconnect from USB sound” and the somewhat too bright blue LEDs were not lit. Pretty simple. The diagnosis should be something like “No power. Bad fuse. Bad power supply. Loose or disconnected wire.”

I was about to throw it away and order a new one, but it is just out of its warranty period (of course). I figured I have nothing to lose, I don’t have an alternative right now, and it’s an approximately $200 unit, so I opened it up (Photo A).

Like most consumer electronics products these days, there are no accessible fuses in the power supply. However, there are two small surface-mount fuses in the 20-volt path. I checked those first. They are

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