dgatwood
is out. Leave a message.
Since nobody has replied....
Well, it depends on whether you're willing to risk the possibility of bricking it by shorting something out, lifting a trace, cooking a chip, or frying something with static while you're working on it.
I'm a little concerned with the way the poster decided to hang capacitors off the back of the board. I'm pretty sure that violates the PCI spec, i.e. don't be surprised if you have to put this in the leftmost slot to keep from having problems with the next card bumping into the caps. It will certainly make removing the card a much riskier proposition if you make the mod in that way. IMHO, unless it ends up adding too much electrical noise, it would probably be better from a safety standpoint to tape a couple of very thin (like 18 AWG or smaller... probably 22 AWG stranded) wires down to the back side of the board, run them over the top of the board, and tape the caps to the metal end plate wherever you can find an open spot.
Oh, and if those are between power and ground as I believe them to be, you should only need to run one ground plus one wire for the hot side of each of the four caps, I think. Be sure to tape down any rework wires you use!
Beyond that risk, though, the mod seems trivial enough and safe in principal. He's disabling a high-pass filter (that M-Audio should have disabled in the first place!!!) and adding additional power filtering.
I would caution that adding additional filter caps on the power lines increases the inrush current requirements. If the M-Audio board happens to be near the limit already (unlikely), doing so might pull the inrush current above the specs allowed by PCI, at which point you run the risk that either your power supply will say "heck no" or the motherboard will blow some surface-mount fuse that powers the PCI bus. I'd say that's a pretty low risk---probably on the order of a one-in-a-million long shot---but I would be remiss in my paranoia if I didn't point it out.
I would also ask some people who know more about this than I do. All things considered, hacking electronic circuits is not my area of expertise....
Well, it depends on whether you're willing to risk the possibility of bricking it by shorting something out, lifting a trace, cooking a chip, or frying something with static while you're working on it.
I'm a little concerned with the way the poster decided to hang capacitors off the back of the board. I'm pretty sure that violates the PCI spec, i.e. don't be surprised if you have to put this in the leftmost slot to keep from having problems with the next card bumping into the caps. It will certainly make removing the card a much riskier proposition if you make the mod in that way. IMHO, unless it ends up adding too much electrical noise, it would probably be better from a safety standpoint to tape a couple of very thin (like 18 AWG or smaller... probably 22 AWG stranded) wires down to the back side of the board, run them over the top of the board, and tape the caps to the metal end plate wherever you can find an open spot.
Oh, and if those are between power and ground as I believe them to be, you should only need to run one ground plus one wire for the hot side of each of the four caps, I think. Be sure to tape down any rework wires you use!Beyond that risk, though, the mod seems trivial enough and safe in principal. He's disabling a high-pass filter (that M-Audio should have disabled in the first place!!!) and adding additional power filtering.
I would caution that adding additional filter caps on the power lines increases the inrush current requirements. If the M-Audio board happens to be near the limit already (unlikely), doing so might pull the inrush current above the specs allowed by PCI, at which point you run the risk that either your power supply will say "heck no" or the motherboard will blow some surface-mount fuse that powers the PCI bus. I'd say that's a pretty low risk---probably on the order of a one-in-a-million long shot---but I would be remiss in my paranoia if I didn't point it out.
I would also ask some people who know more about this than I do. All things considered, hacking electronic circuits is not my area of expertise....
CIRO
Eu mesmo
Dgatwood:
Thanks A LOT for all the helpfull advices!
Ciro
Thanks A LOT for all the helpfull advices!
Ciro