Philips Streamium WACS700 Quick start guide

Philips WACS700 hard drive upgrade
Please note that this procedure will invalidate any warranty on the unit.
Any errors or omissions are not accepted by the author, if you follow this guide any responsibility for damage to the unit is your responsibility.
Soldering is required in this procedure, if you are not competent do not try it.
Disconnect the unit from the mains power supply.
Figure 1, centre base of WACS700
Remove the two torx screws circled in figure and remove the plastic cover; this exposes the speaker connectors in figure 2.

Figure 2, centre base of WACS700 showing removal of speaker connectors
Disconnect the two speaker connectors from the centre unit and remove the speaker wire from the guide in the centre unit.

Figure 3, showing removal of speakers from either side of main unit
To remove the speakers insert a screw driver, as shown pushing the clip away from the main unit towards the speaker. Apply pressure to push the speaker down, in relation to
the base unit (about cm) and remove the speaker. Remove the speaker from the other side in the same way.

Figure 4, showing side of speaker that normally attaches to the centre unit

Figure 5, showing main unit (from the rear) with speakers removed
Remove the 6 torx (T 0) screws as indicated.

Figure 6, showing the front of the main unit being lifted off the rear of the main unit (note the two ribbon connectors between the front and rear sections)
Once the 6 torx screws have been removed, carefully turn the main unit onto it’s back. Carefully separate the front from the back, disconnecting the two ribbon cables between
the front and back of the unit (as highlighted).

Figure 7, showing the CD drive (top) and hard disk drive (underneath) Although this picture was actually taken with the hard drive removed, my mistake!!
Remove the 4 screws (circled), and the two springs (ovals). The springs are very tricky to remove and should be removed with care to avoid damage to the circuit board on the
right. Carefully lift the CD/hard disk combination unit off it’s pegs (4). The underside of the CD/hard drive has two ribbon cables running from a circuit board between the two to
the circuit board on the right hand side. It is not advisable to disturb these ribbon cables, to reseat them requires splitting the CD unit from the hard drive unit and removing the
bottom assembly. Proceed at your peril.
Rotate the CD/hard drive unit carefully as arrowed above.

Figure 8, showing the hard drive power and IDE ribbon cables Please note this picture shows the CD drive removed from the hard drive, this operation can be completed with both intact
Remove the hard drive power and IDE ribbon cables carefully, there’s not a lot of room!!
With these cables removed it’s possible to rotate the unit further if required.

Figure 9, showing the hard drive assembly Please note the picture shows the CD drive removed (on top of the hard drive) this operation can be completed without separating these assemblies
Remove the three screws from the left hand side of the hard disk assembly. With the hard disk/CD drive assembly positioned as in figure 9 remove the first two screws from the
right hand side. Manoeuvre the assembly so as to remove the final screw from the right hand side. This one is a real pain. Do not disturb the ribbon cables!!
The hard disk assembly can now be removed from underneath the CD drive.

Figure 10, showing the hard drive assembly with the power supply interface board on the right and the IDE interface on the left
Remove the two circuit boards by unsoldering the metal tabs that attach the metal cage to the circuit boards. Four for the IDE board and three for the power board. Once de-
soldered these tabs can be bent back and the hard disk removed. The circuit boards can in turn be removed from the hard drive.
My replacement drive was a Western Digital WD800JB drive (80GB, 7200rpm and 8mb cache) which seems to work fine, despite the fact that the original unit was a Maxtor
40GB, 5400rpm, 2mb cache. The only difference is a slightly different power and IDE connector position on the hard drives, and that the WD drive is slightly thicker, although
this does not seem to make a difference.

Figure 11, showing partition information for the original Maxtor disk (disk 2)
I made one attempt to copy the hard drive and resize the partition using Norton Ghost, which failed miserably. Once put back together the WACS700 kept on showing ‘Booting’.
I then used “X-Ways Forensics v 3.0 SR- ” to clone the old drive to the new one. Again I put everything back together and it worked well. I don’t know if the problem was with
Norton or that I hadn’t perhaps connected the ribbon cables correctly. Who knows. I then used “Acronis Disk Director Suite v 0.0.2 7” to resize the last Linux Ext3
(33,58 .2MB) partition to fill the remaining unallocated space (now 70,692.2MB).
Re-assembly is a reverse of the above steps, I didn’t re-solder the tabs on the hard drive cage (just in case I had to take it out again). The connection of the IDE ribbon cable
from the WACS700 to the hard drive connector (figure 8) is a real pain. As are the two springs each side of the CD drive/hard disk assembly.

Figure 12, showing 5,713 tracks on the WACS700 with 40,867MB free
Additional pictures;

Splitting of the CD drive assembly from the hard assembly showing the two ribbon cables that run between them to the circuit board on the right.

CD drive assembly removed from the Hard drive assembly again showing the routing of the two ribbon cables.

CD drive/hard drive assembly removed from the main unit.

Original Maxtor hard drive.