spaceheater

Hey, I recognize that DLL. It's an abstraction library for USB bulk transfers with the Silicon Labs part on AXi series power supplies. According to the vendor's website, you are allowed to freely redistribute this library. I believe it won't help you interpret the protocol you're looking at, since that will be owned by the designer of the PSU (Flextronics, according to that teardown site). It might be exposed by the MCU firmware, if those who have unpacked it are still around and want to share. Speaking of MCU's, I forgot to report back omegatotal's findings! The Commander node has a Freescale S08JM MCU, which is designed for USB devices. The Cooling Link has a Freescale S08MP MCU, which is designed for "brushless DC motor applications", i.e. PC fans. Its communication interface is SMBus.

That would be awesome! And speaking of power supplies, I found a REAL teardown, this time from someone who has actually got a clue of what he is doing: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Corsair/AX1200i/5.html A lot of PSU teardowns are on this site. They reveal that AX series PSU's have the main controller on a Freescale part and the Corsair Link interface on a Silicon Labs part. The HX series have the main controller and Corsair Link interface all in one part from Microchip. This does confirm that it's not a one-MCU-fits-all solution for Corsair Link devices. However, the Silicon Labs part has the same 48-pin package that was visible in the H80i, so I am willing to bet they are the same.

I know that you can use the UsbRobbins.dll to access and read an RM PSU bridge device. I don't know who the vendor of this library is or whether you are allowed to freely redistribute it, though.

That's pretty cool, how did you unpack the firmware from the SREC? I might be able to help with a firmware modification if you are still interested. Edit: I found out some more. Finding out what MCU is inside would be great if we wanted to develop our own firmware. Even if we don't make any custom firmware, we can still help out red-ray by checking the manufacturer's app notes for the upload procedure. So I went looking for teardowns, and found one of the H80i here. Actually, it's more of an advertisement than a teardown, and he doesn't remove the LED module or identify any of the electronics. Even the one picture with the MCU showing has the labeling obscured by darkness! From the pins, however, we can at least tell that it's a QFP48. Also, despite all the firmware images being SREC, there might be different MCU's on each device. Has anyone opened up any other devices to find out? I imagine some people have opened the Commander nodes at least, since it would have low risk of causing any damage, and they look like they were designed for experimentation from the start.