My guess at the reason why that chip was destroyed so easily was to protect the private keys that may have been stored in it. If that device was used for authenticating to a high security network, you may be able to extract the keys and impersonate the device potentially by accessing the chip directly. The choice of BGA was probably also chosen just to make the contact points on the chip more difficult to get to, so you can't probe it while it's running.
Dave, if you take that torch down to the local bait and tackle shop I would bet you can find a good clip on swivel that will fit that ring mount on the cap. Then you can hook that to the key chain.
That Check Point flat pack is a custom ASIC which is needed for stateful firewall and any UTM features it may have. I didn't check the specs on that check point model. UTM for those new players = Universal Thread Mitigation. A term coined for devices that perform multiple security functions such as firewall, antivirus detect/block, intrusion detection/prevention, web filtering, etc.
Love the little torch shame about the battery usage on its highest output , if only someone would make a device to extract more power out of these batteries........
+Darren Woods I'll bet it can handle a li-ion battery. What's a shame is that none of these companies offer a carabiner flashlight. There are some crappy ones out there, but nothing of nice or even decent quality.
+6e7 ama To do so, Dave surely need to HAVE a TR-808, so it´s up to YOU sending one in!!! As he, IMHO, does not know what that is, and he - for sure- does not have one!!....
+twocvbloke Hey, those motherfuckers take a shit kicking, even if they're slow, hot and useless. Some guy managed to get one to like 8GHz on LN2. That's mighty impressive IMO.
Teth47 Yeah, but single core, feck all cache (it was basically a 775 sell'n'run with a P4 sticker), motherboard with blown out caps, that P4 chip was junk, my far older 478 P4s handily outperformed it... :P
***** Yeah, but that silicone was tough as nails. It laid the groundwork for that legendary D0 stepping on the i7 920. I'm thankful for the example it set, even if it was in and of itself a piece of shit.
I'm just guessing on the coil in the chip. I know that security researchers were able to reverse engineer the RF emissions from certain CPU's to determine what the processor is doing. So perhaps it's there to mask the activity of the CPU from monitoring. I'd further postulate that the destruction was a planned failure to prevent proper physical examination of the die?
Very close to the Sony DCR-TR7000E videocamera I have. Although that is Digital8 already. It was quite fancy thing and quite expensive back in the day!
I have that exact same Sony camera somewhere lost in the attic except its the NTSC version and it still works. I remember that brick of a battery charger, you had to slide the battery on it and the battery could easily fall off. Brings back memories.
I had a 199 scope meter with the same line issue. The problem is the heat staked flex between the main board and the driver. Very common problem, it occurred from the meter being taken apart and reassembled. There used to be a person on eBay repairing this problem specifically. I believe it cost $199 usd plus shipping. Best of luck!
If nobody else caught why the chip ripped right off, it's because the package was soldered directly to the heatsink. I'm assuming the heat spreader and heatsink where one single piece. AMD does the same thing with their CPU packages minus the large heatsink. Most people I'd believe would say it's for thermal dissipation as solder has a higher transfer density even than the best Thermal Paste. It could have very well also been to prevent tampering, but would have been avoided with a rework station or a hot air gun to just pull the package right off.
That BGA looks to be a standard PCB style interposer, finer pitch than regular PCB of course, but as far as I know, the same old process. The big pours and rings (not spirals, I think) should just be power and ground. Somewhere there's an x-ray of one of these devices (maybe it was mikeselectricstuff who took some pics like this?), the bond wires are all over, every other wire a ground or supply and the signal traces clearly being routed between shielding grounds and with characteristic lengths, beautiful stuff. Would like to see the heatsink heated up and de-caked of its material, if just to see if you can find any numbers on the top of the ex-device?
The AAA battery has to be a bit loose in that torch......so you can fit a 'Batteriser' in there and make the battery last a gazzillion times longer :-)
To me, having a 5.4v in and a 6v in likely means "we want precisely 5.4v but we don't want to waste voltage using a regulator. We'll allow you to use standard power packs* by offering this alternate input connector with a silicon diode in series". *could also mean 'the other power pack we might have supplied you depending on which was cheaper when we placed the order that month' Still seems dumb but with a 0.6v difference that seems the likely reason to me.
The scopemeter is an easy fix, i've done a few of them. It's reasonably common and well documented, its just a failed connection at one of those heated flex joint things. The battery is cheap enough too.
Some micro torch lights use an intermediate small (1/4" - 3/8"Dia.) split ring to connect to the larger heaver key ring. This releases a lot of the binding against keys and pocket. Should have been installed or included. besides
Hey Dave love the mail bag's always a treat. I've seen similar things on other secure devices. once assembled the only way to see what's going on inside is to destroy it. I look forward to the scope repair/attempt to repair and the handicam retro teardown don't keep us waiting too long ! greetings from RVA in Murica by the way!
had a look at possibly fixing one of those handcams 10+ years back, just a sea of leaking caps, my guess is that to get it as small and light as poss. the caps cases were extra thin ,and the dielectric extra ionic.
Lithuania represent! To be frank its rather amazing to see stuff travel to Australia, so I can just watch it get taken apart sitting here in Vilnius. The dude in the box is the famous Lithuanian painter/composer M.K. Čiurlionis, you can see his painting on the cover.
A good tip for the split ring on the torch is to use a small fishing split ring and a swivel, with a larger split ring on the other end. Care of my owd dad.
German LED Lenser: They have both microcontroller M series and normal ones without all the modes (P i think) They sell a AAA one which is really bright, ridiculously small and it only has on/off. No annoying modes.
+Sirus Google for "Ultrafire Mini Adjustable CREE Q5 LED". One mode, tail cap button, with adjustable beam width, eats both AAs and 14500 li-ions. I like em, and 'buyincoins' sells them (and a bunch of other types) for cheap.
+Sirus Just gut it and make it direct drive. Also, most LED drivers can be made to be single mode, usually just need to solder in a jumper, or cut a trace. Takes some guesswork.
Munchknuckle Dar thanks for the info, 220 lumens isn't to shabby. Better than the epilepsy inducing flashing 90 lumens I get from my unicom at the same price
I think you could solve your ring/button clearance problem on the new light by using a much smaller ring on the light that then connects to your larger keyring.
I had a Kyocera Finecam just like the one in the Mailbag. Worked OK with a SD card under 1GB. Kyocera also made a camera with 10x zoom back in 2003-2004: the Finecam M410R (which I own one).
+Mobin92 That firewall is probably a Trojan horse. Nothing you really would want to rely on. The physical protection is there more to protect the backdoor "technology" than anything else. There exists nothing in-chip that is safer than e properly setup DMZ system based of off BSD of linux with everything clear and open to the user.
Lvent2101 The keywords are "Israel" and "former military". If you think the govt. in the US has a hand in back doors.. Just wait until you see what the Mossad will do for your privacy! It's one big pile of conspiracy dung.
+EEVblog Checkpoint has the world's best security software and hardware, if one open the cover on a Check Point product it can put Checkpoint in a self-destruct mode, erasing all of it memory, one of the reason why there is a button battery in there.
I took apart one of those cameras too. I still have the mini CRT that was inside it. It would be cool to see if you can get the CRT powered and working.
I have been using the 555s to make police lights for the kids but have hit a snag, I used trm pots to chang the flash rate from side to side and also using them to speed up the lights so as they can flash multiple times before alternating. I found that one side will allow multiple flashes and the switch to the other side but I cant get it to flash multiple times. Does anyone know the fix or send me in the right direction to try another layout. I have only been using caps, resistors, pots and of courcethe 555. thanks
Had that camcorder, it died after being dropped onto carpet from about 1.5m though, so not very robust. Ended up using the CRT viewfinder for some projects.
separate another part of the chip from the heatsink to see the markings on it. that would be interesting. also i've seen some old altera FPGAs with a similar construction.
Lithuania, heck yeah! Us Lithuanians sure love our candy. The guy added loads to the package! Blue ones are called "Swallow" as in bird Swallow. Squares are like chewy toffee, and the brown ones are the ones with rock hard center.
I've torn down one of those handicams before, or rather its big brother with a zoom lens. If you can reverse the process and get the tape pickup working properly afterwards you're some sort of genius. I still have most of the bits of my Dad's in the cardboard box of shame.
These are basic home/small-office router+security devices, made by a division that Checkpoint acquired 10 or so years ago called Sofaware - they kind of are a distinct line from their expensive firewalls, and serve a completely different purpose. They run Linux under the hood and the security stuff is done in software, just like a Linksys home router might do. I'd be shocked if there is any real hardware offload beyond the standard switch chip. You're not going to protect a Fortune 500's main datacenter with these - more like the CFO's house or the 2 person sales office in New Mexico. I think you ripped an ARM or Atom processor apart. And if it's stolen, there aren't any corporate secrets to protect on it - no real need to protect the chips. You just deactivate it and move on. The magic is in the management - you buy the right licenses, the right appliances, etc, and you can manage hundreds or thousands of corporate firewalls all from a central console, with tools that make it easy to express complex corporate policy. But you definitely pay for that privilege.
Hiya, dave, Just ordered a Lumintop TORCH ( :-) ) on your recommendation,.... and it arrived today, (24/10/2015) I'm afraid, they have modded them a tad,.. new one does NOT have a push button switch on the back, you have to rotate the back section to switch between light intensities... :-( Cheers, Fred
I have one of those Digital 8 still in a drawer, one thing I remember is it has amazing zoom capability, and if it's Video 8, it should also have a Firewire output, which is handy.
Digital8 came a number of years later (1999). If the sender was correct on the year, 1992, then this is purely analog (and the box claims neither Digital8 nor even Hi8, just 8mm, so presumably Video8 format), so there will be no FireWire output. I have a similar Sony triple CCD Hi8 Handicam (NTSC) from around 1993/1994 that I may tear down in the near future as they have little practical value today and it is simply taking up space.
Hi Dave, Awesome mailbag episode. But the high pitched audio is a bit scrambled, it may be my PC. But I wanted you to know. Check 22:35 with the plastic bags. But once again, it may be my PC. Keep up the good work!
Oh wow, Lithuanian checking in from Auckland here. The package really made me smile this evening, immediately I could recognise the logo of our national post. The chocolates you've got are Krekzdute (swallow bird) and Griliazas (it's a hard toffee with hazelnut inside). They are both actually quite good. MK Ciurlionis is the artist and composer who supposedly was famous ages ago in Europe (not sure about the chocolates). Anyhow, the moment you could smell something I though you've got Sakotis, which is fairly rare cake which looks awesome (check Google) and tastes good too (that's not often, right?). You might even find one in Sydney!
For the flashlight (okay, the torch) you need a smaller split ring to attach to the end of the torch, then hook that to your 1" ring. A quick check on Amazon showed them as small as 16mm. Might check with your local locksmith.
I'd sort of hate to see you do a tear down of a working Sony Handicam there with all of the extra goodies especially if you have no plans to put it back into working order. How about you just forward that to me, cause I would use it :)
Curtis Nixon If this one does not work, cassette basket is jammed or whatever, then it's not worth fixing. If it is a perfectly good working camera, even with just needing a cleaning of the heads, I think it would be a shame to tear it down just to see how it works without a likely chance of a reassembly. Be much better to take one apart that is already broken beyond a quick and cheap repair.
+WaybackTECH I am a vintage tech fan, but these things were mass produced in copious quantities. When one can record 60 FPS 1080p video on a _phone_, in FAR better quality than some old SD camcorder from the 90s... I see no reason to jump on the preservation bandwagon.
+WaybackTECH The Sony Handicam is definitely something he'd tear down without breaking and put back together. It's only cheap junk or stuff that only has a practical use that doesn't apply to him, like the security thing that he destructively tears down and throws in the garbage.
Hi Dave, it's most likely an ARM CPU you killed there. Checkpoint is a Software company, it uses mostly standard cpu's from ARM to Intel Xeon. Grretings from germany
I just get so amazed by how much technology has advanced in our lifetimes, look at the size of that handycam, look at the size of the camera on your smartphone. The smaller one is millions of pixels better. Amazing. Welcome to the next millennium!
On the flashlight... you might consider adding either a small lanyard through both the hoops, and use that to connect to the key ring... or maybe using a small key ring for the light with that connected to the big one. :D
I don't believe the holes on the end cap of the torch are made for key rings. It is made for lanyards, wrist straps, etc. Something of a string type nature which would not affect the button at all.
My guess: the strange things inside that network security chip are related to preventing leaking information, to avoid (clues of) keys or other data being emitted as RF emissions.
Hm, I have mine on the keyring with a smaller (8mm or so diameter) ring and then attached to the torch. Much better and not in the way of the button, and more flexible in any case
Checkpoint firewalls run Linux and custom software and extensions to the kernel. The chip that was pulled apart was likely an Intel IXP465 of similar ARM SoC.
Can't wait till the Handycam teardown. My parents used one my entire childhood, in fact we still have it in its special leather like material carrying case. It would be neat to see it's insides.
I think SD cards above 2GB use a different chip structure or something. There were lots of devices that had a limitation of 2GB cards for that reason. I think the ones bigger than 2GB and called SDHC (high capacity?) cards. Also, are you saying that a high end company like Fluke used a negative centre plug? Unbelievable.
We still have a Sony CCD-TR305E camcorder! It's as temperamental as anything but dad refuses to part with it until he's backed up the tapes so some more up to date media
Trying to lose weight? Not gonna happen. We're all secretly trying to fatten you up to the point you can't leave the office, so we get even more videos~ ;D
Hey Dave, how's the Lumintop torch working out for you? I was in the market for something like this (using my phone as a torch sucks) and bought one immediately after you posted this video, which finally arrived from China today.
That should be a Cavium SoC running on MIPS architecture. Possibly a Nitrox series SoC. The ring like traces are probably power delivery/ return traces on the PBGA package.
sorry for being ignorant but could that coil in the checkpoint product be an antenna? the company was started by an ex IDF member, maybe surveillance gear?
In the UK, CheckPoint firewalls are fairly highly regarded. They're CESG approved which is a security standard for public sector \ government organisations. Hertfordshire Police use several CheckPoint firewalls. ...allegedly.
"Coil" in BGA chip is just a die filler stopper, so underfill does not go outside in routing area.
Well, I did wanted you to troubleshoot that firewall, but it was hilarious!
Good work!
The fit probably is a bit loose so you can fit a batteriser to get 80% longer lasting light...
... DUCKS....!
+Diggnuts LFMAO! Shots Fired!
+Diggnuts You see all the down votes he has now! lol
+Diggnuts that was 80x longer in the original advertisement!
+Uwe Zimmermann You do realize I made a joke... right?
+Uwe Zimmermann
Haha, still just as beleivable
My guess at the reason why that chip was destroyed so easily was to protect the private keys that may have been stored in it. If that device was used for authenticating to a high security network, you may be able to extract the keys and impersonate the device potentially by accessing the chip directly. The choice of BGA was probably also chosen just to make the contact points on the chip more difficult to get to, so you can't probe it while it's running.
Dave, if you take that torch down to the local bait and tackle shop I would bet you can find a good clip on swivel that will fit that ring mount on the cap. Then you can hook that to the key chain.
+Twilight Sparkle and I know yours! haven't finished watching that show yet
That Check Point flat pack is a custom ASIC which is needed for stateful firewall and any UTM features it may have. I didn't check the specs on that check point model. UTM for those new players = Universal Thread Mitigation. A term coined for devices that perform multiple security functions such as firewall, antivirus detect/block, intrusion detection/prevention, web filtering, etc.
***** No idea. Was it confirmed to be a coil or did it just look like a coil? My guess is it's for EM or ES protection.
+Tobia C. radiation hardening
Love the little torch shame about the battery usage on its highest output , if only someone would make a device to extract more power out of these batteries........
+Darren Woods
What an ace idea. Maybe we should build and market such a device.
OH wait a min!!! ;-)
+Darren Woods
I'll bet it can handle a li-ion battery. What's a shame is that none of these companies offer a carabiner flashlight. There are some crappy ones out there, but nothing of nice or even decent quality.
Please do TR-808 on the \#808 EEVblog
+6e7 ama Man, that would be so awesome...
+6e7 ama To do so, Dave surely need to HAVE a TR-808, so it´s up to YOU sending one in!!! As he, IMHO, does not know what that is, and he - for sure- does not have one!!....
+TubiCal I don't even have one for myself...
If you can get the cap off the heat sink, I'd still be curious to see what it was.
Dave, you just invented a 2 second ic decap technique
+VoltLog Try it on your gear, totally non-destructive!
+EEVblog I did it to a Pentium4 775 CPU, didn't change it's performance either, mostly cos it was a gutless turd of a processor... :P
+twocvbloke Hey, those motherfuckers take a shit kicking, even if they're slow, hot and useless. Some guy managed to get one to like 8GHz on LN2. That's mighty impressive IMO.
Teth47
Yeah, but single core, feck all cache (it was basically a 775 sell'n'run with a P4 sticker), motherboard with blown out caps, that P4 chip was junk, my far older 478 P4s handily outperformed it... :P
***** Yeah, but that silicone was tough as nails. It laid the groundwork for that legendary D0 stepping on the i7 920. I'm thankful for the example it set, even if it was in and of itself a piece of shit.
Hey Dave! Another Lithuanian fan here :)
+Juozas Miškinis
I think Dave have a lot Lithuanian fans :)
Well, there are few of us.
+Juozas Miškinis
Hey Dave! Greetings from Lithuania :)
+Gediminas Vileikis Yes he dose :D
+1
for the routher (firewall or security gateway) it is a standard SOC chip with top mounted RAM chip
I'm just guessing on the coil in the chip. I know that security researchers were able to reverse engineer the RF emissions from certain CPU's to determine what the processor is doing. So perhaps it's there to mask the activity of the CPU from monitoring.
I'd further postulate that the destruction was a planned failure to prevent proper physical examination of the die?
Very close to the Sony DCR-TR7000E videocamera I have. Although that is Digital8 already. It was quite fancy thing and quite expensive back in the day!
I have that exact same Sony camera somewhere lost in the attic except its the NTSC version and it still works. I remember that brick of a battery charger, you had to slide the battery on it and the battery could easily fall off. Brings back memories.
BTW: Check point makes firewalls. Like Zone alarm
Ha ha Lithuanian sends stuff, fills the empty space with candy, not packing peanuts :D
I have a similar camera waiting to take apart but I'll wait for the teardown just to see what to expect
I had a 199 scope meter with the same line issue. The problem is the heat staked flex between the main board and the driver. Very common problem, it occurred from the meter being taken apart and reassembled. There used to be a person on eBay repairing this problem specifically. I believe it cost $199 usd plus shipping. Best of luck!
If nobody else caught why the chip ripped right off, it's because the package was soldered directly to the heatsink. I'm assuming the heat spreader and heatsink where one single piece. AMD does the same thing with their CPU packages minus the large heatsink. Most people I'd believe would say it's for thermal dissipation as solder has a higher transfer density even than the best Thermal Paste. It could have very well also been to prevent tampering, but would have been avoided with a rework station or a hot air gun to just pull the package right off.
+Asaggy Noodle Exactly, he just needed to use a heatgun, this was just stupid.
That BGA looks to be a standard PCB style interposer, finer pitch than regular PCB of course, but as far as I know, the same old process. The big pours and rings (not spirals, I think) should just be power and ground. Somewhere there's an x-ray of one of these devices (maybe it was mikeselectricstuff who took some pics like this?), the bond wires are all over, every other wire a ground or supply and the signal traces clearly being routed between shielding grounds and with characteristic lengths, beautiful stuff.
Would like to see the heatsink heated up and de-caked of its material, if just to see if you can find any numbers on the top of the ex-device?
The AAA battery has to be a bit loose in that torch......so you can fit a 'Batteriser' in there and make the battery last a gazzillion times longer :-)
To me, having a 5.4v in and a 6v in likely means "we want precisely 5.4v but we don't want to waste voltage using a regulator. We'll allow you to use standard power packs* by offering this alternate input connector with a silicon diode in series". *could also mean 'the other power pack we might have supplied you depending on which was cheaper when we placed the order that month'
Still seems dumb but with a 0.6v difference that seems the likely reason to me.
The scopemeter is an easy fix, i've done a few of them. It's reasonably common and well documented, its just a failed connection at one of those heated flex joint things. The battery is cheap enough too.
Some micro torch lights use an intermediate small (1/4" - 3/8"Dia.) split ring to connect to the larger heaver key ring. This releases a lot of the binding against keys and pocket.
Should have been installed or included. besides
Use a vee link to attach the torch to your keyring. That's why it has two holes. The same link as you would find on a bath plug and chain.
Hey Dave love the mail bag's always a treat. I've seen similar things on other secure devices. once assembled the only way to see what's going on inside is to destroy it. I look forward to the scope repair/attempt to repair and the handicam retro teardown don't keep us waiting too long ! greetings from RVA in Murica by the way!
Repair that FLUKE, Dave, it deserves that:) !
had a look at possibly fixing one of those handcams 10+ years back, just a sea of leaking caps, my guess is that to get it as small and light as poss. the caps cases were extra thin ,and the dielectric extra ionic.
Lithuania represent! To be frank its rather amazing to see stuff travel to Australia, so I can just watch it get taken apart sitting here in Vilnius.
The dude in the box is the famous Lithuanian painter/composer M.K. Čiurlionis, you can see his painting on the cover.
A good tip for the split ring on the torch is to use a small fishing split ring and a swivel, with a larger split ring on the other end.
Care of my owd dad.
All i want is a single AA bright cree torch with just an on and off button. no twisting on, no blinky light, one mode. bloody imposible to find.
German LED Lenser: They have both microcontroller M series and normal ones without all the modes (P i think) They sell a AAA one which is really bright, ridiculously small and it only has on/off. No annoying modes.
+Sirus Google for "Ultrafire Mini Adjustable CREE Q5 LED". One mode, tail cap button, with adjustable beam width, eats both AAs and 14500 li-ions. I like em, and 'buyincoins' sells them (and a bunch of other types) for cheap.
+Sirus Just gut it and make it direct drive. Also, most LED drivers can be made to be single mode, usually just need to solder in a jumper, or cut a trace. Takes some guesswork.
+Sirus I use a Coast HP1 its one AA and only one mode.
Munchknuckle Dar thanks for the info, 220 lumens isn't to shabby. Better than the epilepsy inducing flashing 90 lumens I get from my unicom at the same price
I think you could solve your ring/button clearance problem on the new light by using a much smaller ring on the light that then connects to your larger keyring.
I had a Kyocera Finecam just like the one in the Mailbag. Worked OK with a SD card under 1GB. Kyocera also made a camera with 10x zoom back in 2003-2004: the Finecam M410R (which I own one).
Nice to see that the Jigmod made the funding target :)
Why did you break that Firewall? 0o
It's worth like 500$ on ebay.
+Mobin92 It was broken. And it was fun.
+Mobin92 That firewall is probably a Trojan horse. Nothing you really would want to rely on. The physical protection is there more to protect the backdoor "technology" than anything else.
There exists nothing in-chip that is safer than e properly setup DMZ system based of off BSD of linux with everything clear and open to the user.
+Diggnuts yeah I was exactly about to say that, I have seen "checkpoint" in few backdoor articles too.
Lvent2101 The keywords are "Israel" and "former military". If you think the govt. in the US has a hand in back doors.. Just wait until you see what the Mossad will do for your privacy! It's one big pile of conspiracy dung.
+EEVblog Checkpoint has the world's best security software and hardware, if one open the cover on a Check Point product it can put Checkpoint in a self-destruct mode, erasing all of it memory, one of the reason why there is a button battery in there.
Oh Checkpoint firewalls.Hated them.
I took apart one of those cameras too. I still have the mini CRT that was inside it. It would be cool to see if you can get the CRT powered and working.
I have been using the 555s to make police lights for the kids but have hit a snag, I used trm pots to chang the flash rate from side to side and also using them to speed up the lights so as they can flash multiple times before alternating. I found that one side will allow multiple flashes and the switch to the other side but I cant get it to flash multiple times. Does anyone know the fix or send me in the right direction to try another layout. I have only been using caps, resistors, pots and of courcethe 555. thanks
Had that camcorder, it died after being dropped onto carpet from about 1.5m though, so not very robust. Ended up using the CRT viewfinder for some projects.
separate another part of the chip from the heatsink to see the markings on it. that would be interesting. also i've seen some old altera FPGAs with a similar construction.
Great to see some Lithuanians here. Greetings from Lithuania
First time seeing a package from Lithuania :D
Lithuania, heck yeah! Us Lithuanians sure love our candy. The guy added loads to the package! Blue ones are called "Swallow" as in bird Swallow. Squares are like chewy toffee, and the brown ones are the ones with rock hard center.
please repair the fluke!! I just bought a new fluke 179 and love it.
Jigmod is awesome! I just search in last year exactly something like this! Sold! A full pack!
I've torn down one of those handicams before, or rather its big brother with a zoom lens. If you can reverse the process and get the tape pickup working properly afterwards you're some sort of genius. I still have most of the bits of my Dad's in the cardboard box of shame.
These are basic home/small-office router+security devices, made by a division that Checkpoint acquired 10 or so years ago called Sofaware - they kind of are a distinct line from their expensive firewalls, and serve a completely different purpose. They run Linux under the hood and the security stuff is done in software, just like a Linksys home router might do. I'd be shocked if there is any real hardware offload beyond the standard switch chip. You're not going to protect a Fortune 500's main datacenter with these - more like the CFO's house or the 2 person sales office in New Mexico. I think you ripped an ARM or Atom processor apart. And if it's stolen, there aren't any corporate secrets to protect on it - no real need to protect the chips. You just deactivate it and move on.
The magic is in the management - you buy the right licenses, the right appliances, etc, and you can manage hundreds or thousands of corporate firewalls all from a central console, with tools that make it easy to express complex corporate policy. But you definitely pay for that privilege.
Hiya, dave, Just ordered a Lumintop TORCH ( :-) ) on your recommendation,.... and it arrived today, (24/10/2015) I'm afraid, they have modded them a tad,.. new one does NOT have a push button switch on the back, you have to rotate the back section to switch between light intensities... :-(
Cheers, Fred
+Fred Cooper ...... The new version also has a fairly strong magnet in the endcap, where the switch used to be...........
Thumbs up for Lithuanian viewers!
I am also from Lithuania (Lietuva) :)
You could always use a intermediate small oblong link/loop/nylonstring before you go to the keyring... that would solve the problem easily enough.
I have one of those Digital 8 still in a drawer, one thing I remember is it has amazing zoom capability, and if it's Video 8, it should also have a Firewire output, which is handy.
Digital8 came a number of years later (1999). If the sender was correct on the year, 1992, then this is purely analog (and the box claims neither Digital8 nor even Hi8, just 8mm, so presumably Video8 format), so there will be no FireWire output. I have a similar Sony triple CCD Hi8 Handicam (NTSC) from around 1993/1994 that I may tear down in the near future as they have little practical value today and it is simply taking up space.
4:49 did you just try to make "streets ahead" happen?
Hi Dave,
Awesome mailbag episode.
But the high pitched audio is a bit scrambled, it may be my PC. But I wanted you to know. Check 22:35 with the plastic bags.
But once again, it may be my PC.
Keep up the good work!
Oh wow, Lithuanian checking in from Auckland here. The package really made me smile this evening, immediately I could recognise the logo of our national post. The chocolates you've got are Krekzdute (swallow bird) and Griliazas (it's a hard toffee with hazelnut inside). They are both actually quite good. MK Ciurlionis is the artist and composer who supposedly was famous ages ago in Europe (not sure about the chocolates). Anyhow, the moment you could smell something I though you've got Sakotis, which is fairly rare cake which looks awesome (check Google) and tastes good too (that's not often, right?). You might even find one in Sydney!
the kickstarter project in the beginning is actually a really cool design if you are messing around with µCs
That small lumintop flashlight is a REALLY good one, make it your edc and enjoy.
34:29 Don't turn it on, TEAR it apart!
For the flashlight (okay, the torch) you need a smaller split ring to attach to the end of the torch, then hook that to your 1" ring. A quick check on Amazon showed them as small as 16mm. Might check with your local locksmith.
Cool! I had this Sony camera but it unfortunately broke on a holiday trip around 2005.
I'd sort of hate to see you do a tear down of a working Sony Handicam there with all of the extra goodies especially if you have no plans to put it back into working order. How about you just forward that to me, cause I would use it :)
+WaybackTECH agree with you.
+WaybackTECH Pay the postage from Ireland and you can have mine lol, got a very similar one up stairs doing nothing lol
Curtis Nixon
If this one does not work, cassette basket is jammed or whatever, then it's not worth fixing. If it is a perfectly good working camera, even with just needing a cleaning of the heads, I think it would be a shame to tear it down just to see how it works without a likely chance of a reassembly. Be much better to take one apart that is already broken beyond a quick and cheap repair.
+WaybackTECH I am a vintage tech fan, but these things were mass produced in copious quantities. When one can record 60 FPS 1080p video on a _phone_, in FAR better quality than some old SD camcorder from the 90s... I see no reason to jump on the preservation bandwagon.
+WaybackTECH The Sony Handicam is definitely something he'd tear down without breaking and put back together. It's only cheap junk or stuff that only has a practical use that doesn't apply to him, like the security thing that he destructively tears down and throws in the garbage.
Lithuania!!! proud to be mentioned on this channel :)
Hi Dave,
it's most likely an ARM CPU you killed there. Checkpoint is a Software company, it uses mostly standard cpu's from ARM to Intel Xeon.
Grretings from germany
I just get so amazed by how much technology has advanced in our lifetimes, look at the size of that handycam, look at the size of the camera on your smartphone. The smaller one is millions of pixels better. Amazing. Welcome to the next millennium!
On the flashlight... you might consider adding either a small lanyard through both the hoops, and use that to connect to the key ring... or maybe using a small key ring for the light with that connected to the big one. :D
I don't believe the holes on the end cap of the torch are made for key rings. It is made for lanyards, wrist straps, etc. Something of a string type nature which would not affect the button at all.
The holes in the end of the torch are for a lanyard, not a key ring. Good torch though.
Speaking of Back to the Future, it's only another three days isn't it? 10/15/2015? Is that right?
LOL, I deal mostly with guitar effects and the majority of it is center neg thanks to Roland/Boss!!
That's just evil of them
Dave, any chance you could get Fluke to send you one of their modern Scopemeters for a review and teardown?
the jigmod is pretty cool
My guess: the strange things inside that network security chip are related to preventing leaking information, to avoid (clues of) keys or other data being emitted as RF emissions.
A friend of mine (one of my best friends, and my current employer!) had that camera when we were in high school. :)
I know thats a bit random but those 20 bucks multimeters are they worth it? cause i really need one
Hm, I have mine on the keyring with a smaller (8mm or so diameter) ring and then attached to the torch. Much better and not in the way of the button, and more flexible in any case
I have herd of chips that are suppose to break to make tampering and/or reverse enginering harder but iwe never seen one split in half like that.
Checkpoint firewalls run Linux and custom software and extensions to the kernel. The chip that was pulled apart was likely an Intel IXP465 of similar ARM SoC.
Can't wait till the Handycam teardown. My parents used one my entire childhood, in fact we still have it in its special leather like material carrying case. It would be neat to see it's insides.
With a working voltage of 0.9v - 1.5v and a high current draw this would be a PERFECT way to further disprove Batteriser!
I think SD cards above 2GB use a different chip structure or something. There were lots of devices that had a limitation of 2GB cards for that reason. I think the ones bigger than 2GB and called SDHC (high capacity?) cards. Also, are you saying that a high end company like Fluke used a negative centre plug? Unbelievable.
No chance that camera will accept an sdhc card. The largest one at the time was maybe 128mb.
We still have a Sony CCD-TR305E camcorder! It's as temperamental as anything but dad refuses to part with it until he's backed up the tapes so some more up to date media
What DSLR camera is that at 11:58?
The chip is just a standard BGA chip that you ripped the top off of..what you are seeing is just the layers under the ceramic
Did the Torch not come with a mini (4 inch) Lanyard + Ring ?
The unscrewing the bottom or the top "feature" has probably never been intended as a feature at all.
its an integrated antenna for easy nsa access /tinfoilhat
you could use a cellphone bandy-thing to attach the torch to your key ring
Trying to lose weight? Not gonna happen. We're all secretly trying to fatten you up to the point you can't leave the office, so we get even more videos~ ;D
+rhkips Good one :P
+rhkips like he'd ever get fat :D
Nice, finally something from lithuania.
Looks like a tamper-proof chip, i've seen similar stuff inside other "proprietary" designs
We had one of those Sony handycams when they came out in the early 90's.
Hey Dave, how's the Lumintop torch working out for you? I was in the market for something like this (using my phone as a torch sucks) and bought one immediately after you posted this video, which finally arrived from China today.
That should be a Cavium SoC running on MIPS architecture. Possibly a Nitrox series SoC.
The ring like traces are probably power delivery/ return traces on the PBGA package.
"Thank You", thank you are much. Is there a link to the jig board? If so, PLEASE send me the link...
+Inquire98 kck.st/1LwT4iA
Everything he mentions is usually linked in the description.
+Inquire98 It's in the video info box, behind the SHOW MORE button.
+Inquire98 It's in the description - kck.st/1LwT4iA
"Thank You", I couldn't see the link on my cellphone...
+Inquire98 kck.st/1LwT4iA - the link is also in the video descrition
sorry for being ignorant but could that coil in the checkpoint product be an antenna? the company was started by an ex IDF member, maybe surveillance gear?
In the UK, CheckPoint firewalls are fairly highly regarded. They're CESG approved which is a security standard for public sector \ government organisations. Hertfordshire Police use several CheckPoint firewalls.
...allegedly.
It's an Intel x86_64 CPU and Marvell ethernet switch controller.
Uxwbill still is running his handycam in 2015 hahaha.
Happy Thanksgiving from CANADA!!!! I am not into electronics at all, don't understand most of your videos however I really find them very interesting.