Maker Pro
Maker Pro

SD Card Reader repair

khankll

Feb 6, 2011
110
Joined
Feb 6, 2011
Messages
110
hi
i have more then a dozen sd card readers .. al made by siyotem ..

it works ok and after left un unsed for few weeks /months .. it wont work ..

i have tried cleaning the contacts . but to no luck . tried soldering the contacts .. no luck .

could it be that the ics are programed to go broke after some specific number of uses ?

or could there be any part on it that could go broke.. how to test and repair it..

no physical damge has happened to it . they would be working ok .. before being stored in closet in closed plastic box where there is no moisture etc.

on some card readers the led on card reader would glow and windows would detect them in device manager and the corresponding drive will be shown in my computer but it is shown as 0 bytes and cannot be opened/explored ..tried in linux as well.. on others card readers (they also lack any crystal etc o their pcb ..) they dont even show up in device manager and neither their led comes up ..


i am suspecting the crystal to be the issue .. is there any way one could test it ? some realy cheap dirty method .. ?
i am posting it in repair section to get some clue regarding repair not an advice to buy a new one as these are cheap .. oh btw i do have a new one .. whenever it is not working i buy new one .. but this time i want to repair those dead as well ..

this is the card circuit board

http://www.instructables.com/answers/How-to-fix-card-reader/
 
Last edited:

(*steve*)

¡sǝpodᴉʇuɐ ǝɥʇ ɹɐǝɥd
Moderator
Jan 21, 2010
25,510
Joined
Jan 21, 2010
Messages
25,510
I have had a few SD card readers that have failed almost exactly as you describe.

I put it down to either damage by static or a 3.3V device being run at 5V.

Either way I just replaced them with something more reliable.

If you have access to an oscilloscope then you may be able to probe the crystal to see if its oscillating. I'd use a x10 probe at a minimum.
 

davenn

Moderator
Sep 5, 2009
14,254
Joined
Sep 5, 2009
Messages
14,254
going by the responses on that blog, it sounds as tho that particular reader is useless
and not worth trying to salvage

as Steve said, get a better quality one

Dave
 

khankll

Feb 6, 2011
110
Joined
Feb 6, 2011
Messages
110
yaa its cheapo .. but i have a huge ewaste lying .. just wanted to give it a repair shot ..


if i ever succeed in repairing it .. or most importantly in findng the reason for its sudden damage .. i will update here .
 
Top