In all fairness, i doubt i've ever claimed i'm not a MOTU fanboy, but i DO have somewhat of a soft spot for their hardware. That may or may not be visible from the contents of this blog, especially lately. And since i'm planning on an AVB setup here at the home studio, when i saw this thing going for about half the usual used-market price, i couldn't pass up the opportunity.
Its size is quite diminutive, but it's got some heft to it, feels quite chunky indeed. Not much to see on the outside - a bunch of indicator LEDs on the front, and six RJ45's and the DC input on the back. The magic is what goes on under the hood though, as you might expect. And speaking of which...
Quite fully-packed, but not crowded or cramped. Power supply, networking interfaces and a chunky (presumably) processor.
Starting off "easy", with the power supply section. Nothing uber-sci-fi going on here, since the contents of this seem to only need 3.3V and 1.8V rails, stepped down from the 12V input. The former is based on a Texas Instruments TPS54331, while the latter is handled by a TI TPS54218.
Moving swiftly on, the main actor inside this compact box is a Marvell 88E6352 7-port switch (of which only 5 are used). Sadly couldn't find anything even close to a datasheet for this, save for a press release or two, and a mention in a 2013 product selection guide.
That, in turn, is overseen by a Texas Instruments AM1802E ARM microprocessor, aided by a Micron MT46H32M16LFBF 512Mbit / 64MB LPDDR memory, and a Spansion S25FL256S 256Mbit / 32MB flash chip. Not sure what part number that "EAA 343" marking translates to, on that little DFN-8 packaged regulator, but the silkscreen marking gives it away as providing 1.2V to the microprocessor core. It's a linear one, since there's no inductor nearby, and dropping even a couple hundred mA from 1.8V won't be causing too much heat dissipation.
Not a lot going on, on the bottom of the board.
The biggest chip is a Marvell 88E1116R single-port GbE PHY, in charge of the lone Ethernet-only connection.
The only other piece of silicon is a Texas Instruments TPS3809K33 voltage supervisor / reset controller.
Aaaaand that's about it, really. It powers up, got the firmware updated, and tweaked a setting to ensure compatibility with other-brand AVB gear. I also took the liberty to swap the stock 5.5/2.5mm DC input jack with a Cliff FC681465P, to take both 2.1mm and 2.5mm center pin jacks. Other than that, remains to be seen when i get to use it "in anger", but in time...
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