Review of WINIC W-ETB-07 Easy Transfer Board

Introduction

Sometimes things just don't work out the way I plan them. Consider this pedestal I built to support one end of a table top

Rig before install

(the top is actually a recycled solid core door!). I figured I could hollow it out and hide my tower PC between the supports. Without really thinking it through, I built the unit and put it into service.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that getting access to the rear of the tower won't be easy. The obvious solution is to mount an I/O breakout box in the front. Unfortunately, my tower PC uses every 5-1/4 inch device bay leaving me with just a single spare 3-1/2 inch bay. Most commonly available breakout boxes are made to fit in 5-1/4 inch device bays - they are after all more common. Then I happened to come across the Easy Transfer Board (W-ETB-07, $17.50) at Package2You.com. A quick check on ResellerRatings.com gave me the confidence to order this unit and see if it would do the job.

The unit arrived via FedEx in a well packed box. The box for the W-ETB-07 measured roughly 2.5 x 7 x 10 inches. After a little research on the model number, the manufacturer turned out to be a Taiwanese company called Winic but you'd never know it based on the box!

Inside were two foam pads sandwiching several plastic bags. There were 6 cables, each in their own sealed bags, another bag containing a rear I/O panel, cable ties and screws, and a bag with the main body of the I/O breakout box with a rectangular cutout in it for the cables to exit out the rear of the PC. The breakout box itself is made of beige colored plastic and has an open top for easy cable attachment.

WININC W-ETB-07 Box	What You Get

Features

The unit supports one 9 pin serial port, one Firewire/1394, 2 USB, a line-in/mic, and a line-out/speaker.

Assembly

Each cable snaps into place, except for the serial cable which is simply a pressure fit.

Wired Before Installation

All cables were the same length - 32 inches, not counting the connections at both ends. I used 2 cable ties (my own) to keep the cables bundled together inside the PC chassis. I must admit that I was a little disappointed in having to deal with 6 separate cables instead of one, but I found that separate cables are thinner and thus easier to maneuver in tight places.

The simple 2 sheet directions wasn't much to look at. It did provide one important hint though the writing could have been clearer. The 9 pin serial connector is too large to thread through the cutout in the I/O bracket at the rear so that cable must be threaded from the rear. The other cables are all small enough that they can be threaded from either the inside or the outside.

Inside Device Bay	Inside After Install

Because the housing is plastic, self-threading screws are provided (in addition to the regular 4-40 and 6-32 machine screws used in PCs). These bite into the plastic and tighten easily; but they do require a little more dexterity than simple screwing in the standard machine screws.

Summary

What can I say ? This unit does the job and the price is right. The manual is pretty much useless, but if you need one for something as simple as this, you probably shouldn't be rewiring your PC! I'd like to see more 3-1/2 inch I/O breakout boxes. Obviously a breakout box that size places limitations on the number of connectors supported but that's a tradeoff for the user to decide. For me, the connections provided here were just right. I wanted mainly 1394, USB and line-in and this device met the requirements.

Rear View with Cables Attached	Front View	Front View Again

You can also find this product at CompGeeks.com at the time of this writing. Comments or questions? Talk back in the forums!