The Fire Wave case snaps together, which means its a pain to take apart without damaging the cosmetic appearance.

8

The best place to start is the right side, where the fire wire ports are located.

Once I got it started it was pretty easy form there, using the plastic spudger.

Ok now that its open lets have a look inside.

The board is pretty simplistic, no heat-sinks or fans of the sort.

6

I

The second chip is the Wolfson Microelectronics WM8766G. This semiconductor is a 24-bit 192kHz 6-channel DAC used in many home theater devices such as receivers and dvd/blu-ray players.

The chip right below it is the Xilinx XC9536XL High Perfonmace CPLD (Complex Programmable Logic Device). It works with the Wolfson chip to calculate delay time of the center and surround speakers.

The front of the device has two lights that indicate power and if the dolby chip is active or not.

Thats about it for this teardown. I still use my firewave today, it works great for watching DVD's and such.