I don’t own this ASUS EeeBox B202 anymore, but this video is still useful if you need to get inside one. The B202 is one of ASUS’s little Atom-era nettops, built around an Intel Atom N270 and the 945GSE (ICH7M) chipset. It is very compact, which naturally means getting to anything inside requires pulling quite a lot apart first.

My reason for opening this one was to replace the wireless card. I’d previously installed a different card for another project, and that arrangement wasn’t behaving with Windows. I wanted to get the machine ready for use as an FTP server for the files and PDF downloads on RetroJunkie.net, rather than leave it sitting around doing nothing useful.

Getting into the EeeBox begins with the hard drive and the screws around the outside of the case. A Phillips size 0 screwdriver was doing most of the work, although I’d recommend keeping a record of where everything came from. There are rather more screws inside than you’d expect from a computer this small.

The plastic casing is held together by clips, several of which had already suffered during my earlier adventures. I used a plastic opening tool to separate the sections, although the EeeBox wasn’t particularly keen on cooperating. Some of those clips had become quite fragile, and I managed to lose another one. Wonderful.

Under the outer shell is a metal cage surrounding the mainboard. Removing that reveals the memory, wireless hardware and cooling system, although reaching the wireless card still requires working through several layers of construction. It’s almost as though ASUS wanted to make sure nobody changed it.

The memory is standard DDR2 SO-DIMM, with support for up to 2 GB in the configuration I was using. The wireless card has its usual tiny antenna connectors, which deserve a little care when disconnecting them. I’ve broken those before and would rather not add another casualty to the collection.

Once the card was replaced, I gave the cooling system some attention. The little heatpipe and fan arrangement is rather neat, but dust still manages to find its way into these things. The ethernet port on this particular machine was already giving me trouble, which made working wireless networking rather important.

Reassembling the EeeBox was largely a matter of reversing the process, assuming I could remember where all the screws belonged. I was also experimenting with Final Cut Pro X while editing the video, so there was another entire adventure happening on the computer beside me.

Upgrade your RAM. Replace the hard drive. Swap the wireless card. Clean the dust out of somewhere it should never have fitted in the first place. The possibilities may not actually be endless, but there is considerably more serviceable hardware inside than the tiny case suggests.

Hopefully the video saves somebody a little head scratching while taking one apart. I certainly learned where all the screws go. More or less!

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