Teardown: Planex (PCi) 8-Port Gigabit Ethernet Switch (FXG-081MV)

As much as I like to go thrifting from time to time, often my local thrift shops know nothing about technology and either don’t have technology for sale at all, or they end up mispricing them so badly that I couldn’t really swallow paying the price for it.

As I’ve recently been diving for optical discs in Japan, I decided to expand my thrifting net to buy random products from Japan, especially as I would have to pay the commission/shipping overhead anyway, so I might as well grab a few extra items at a few dollars each. This would give me a chance to feature and tear-down some different products, safe in the knowledge that Japanese second-hand items are often first-rate and can come “as new” sometimes.

This post looks at an 8-port Gigabit switch that cost me ~AU$6 (the minimum price on Suruga-ya’s international shop) on top of my order. Perhaps there’s something interesting about this one…

Unboxing

The brand is an interesting one, as the full name is Planex Communications Inc, with the logo being a stylised “PCi”, looking a bit like “PCL”. This might cause some odd confusions as PCI was also the most common expansion card bus at the time…

Anyway, the box itself has an grey, orange and lime-green colour scheme, with an artwork that shows the switch, convenient wall-mounting neatness with no external power adapter, and is chock-full of various features including its lower power consumption and Jumbo Frame support (the latter being rarely used).

The rear is full of specifications, a network diagram showing how it can be applied and a legend for the product acting a bit like a quick-start guide. I love it when products are so up-front and thoughtful about presenting all of this information. It even advertises two Ethernet cables being included.

The unit is FXG-081MV and there is also a suggested list of compatible Gigabit-speed products which it can interface with.

Despite being Japanese, there is some small English text as well, possibly to make the product se…