Over 10 years ago, I got a TRENDnet TK-IP101, which is an old KVM-over-IP “switch” (actually more like an access point, it doesn’t do any switching by itself). I still use that little box to access the ancient XIN server remotely in an out-of-band management fashion. The box has been working reliably for a long while, but in the past years it would sometimes lock up, so I had to power-cycle it to make it work again. Now at first it was maybe a crash per year or so, roughly. Then every few months. And now it’s more like the box crashing every few weeks as it’s gotten hotter and hotter in my flat, because summer. Okay, there was a small LAN switch sitting on top of the KVM-over-IP box which probably trapped additional heat, but still.

I’ve been looking for another one for years, but the TK-IP101 is really rare these days. Thankfully I found one on eBay UK quite recently, so I immediately jumped at the chance! And it’s new old stock even, which is great. I wouldn’t know how to reset it if it came pre-configured:

 

10 years ago I had [decompiled the KViewer Java client software] to modify it and make it work with modern Java runtime environments. The problem was the deprecated cryptography it uses, which modern Java can fundamentally still use, but it doesn’t allow you to do so. This was successful, and given it’s Java it works pretty much everywhere, Windows, macOS, Linux, *BSD and others, which is nice.

After talking to TRENDnet about [releasing my modified version under a free software license], TRENDnet agreed and allowed me to do so using the [GPL v3]. Their conditions were that all TRENDnet brand names and logos had to be removed and my version – which I named [XViewer] – should in no way suggest that TRENDnet would be responsible for the functionality, stability and safety of XViewer. This I could agree to, of course.

For this new box (if you can call that “new”) I removed all eight screws holding the case together and opened it up. This is what you’ll see when doing so:

So what do we have here? First two 143 MHz CL3 SDR-SDRAM ICs which probably make up the main memory of the box: Two [EOREX EM488M1644VTF] chips. It appears to be 32 MiB large in total, which appears to be sufficient for the tiny Linux system it’s running. Then there is another, single SDR-SDRAM IC made by ESMT that I couldn’t find any documentation for, that [ESMT M12L128324A(2C)] chip. I assume this is the graphics memory. Likely a 4 MiB IC, given the system’s maximum resolution.

Then, there is a NAND flash chip, the one with the little white sticker on it. I couldn’t identify it, looking up “KLE D06BFE90” didn’t yield any results. This should be where the operating system and configuration data are located. Not sure what the CR2032 lithium battery is for here, maybe just for timekeeping?

The two smaller chips up top are a [XILINX® SPARTAN® XC2S200E™] on the right, which is an FPGA. I assume it’s handling input devices, LEDs and I don’t know, maybe even the serial interface? The one on the top left is an [Analog Devices AD9888] VGA chip for output to any local VGA screen. So the box sits between your server’s VGA graphics card and a local monitor, same for the PS/2 inputs that your local keyboard and mouse can be hooked up to. The maximum resolution that graphics chip can do is 1280×1024×24 @ 60 Hz. So not exactly modern, but good enough for my server.

Finally, the big chip in the middle is an [Intel® XScale™ PRIXP425ABD]. This is the systems’ main CPU. I had totally forgotten about the XScale series, it’s from the times when Intel designed ARM chips, a branch they later abandoned. This one’s based on the ancient ARM v5 microarchitecture. The tiny one to the left of it is an [Inphi Corporation Cortina™ LXT972M] 10/100 Mbit/s network chip.

Now I just applied my 2-component thermal adhesive made by Hernon, which consists of the dissipator #746 and the activator #59 and put some heatsinks on the XScale, the VGA and the FPGA chips. I’m pretty sure the latter two won’t get that hot really, but I have a lot of those small heatsinks lying around, so yeah. The XScale CPU can clock at up to 533 MHz, so it’s very likely the hottest-running thing in there. Here we go:

After it’s configured I can swap them and then do the same mod to my old TK-IP101. The additional cooling might solve the stability issues, I had similar cases with other network appliances before, actually. One was an ancient 100 Mbit hub, that had a plug and a mounting spot for a 5 V 40 mm fan. I added heatsinks and a Noctua NF-A4x10 5V fan as well as a dust filter, and it didn’t crash even once afterwards. Same for some old Realtek WiFi access point.

We’ll see, fingers crossed.