So probably quite a quick video.
I have an absolute ton of these SD card adapters.
I use them quite a lot.
This one seems to have gone a bit wonky and I don’t know if you can hear this.
It sounds a bit unhealthy and it certainly doesn’t work.
So I was wondering can we crack this open?
See what’s gone wrong?
Is it even repairable?
Let’s try and open it up and see how it ticks.
So there’s certainly no visible screws and I think it’s probably glued together.
We can actually see down the end.
So let’s see if I can make those visible.
You can see what looks like some spring connectors in there.
Let’s look at one that’s not making a funny noise.
See if we can see anything different.
Between this one and one that is actually working.
Okay so this one definitely works, works quite well.
So let’s see what the sound difference is.
Yeah it definitely sounds less scratchy and horrible.
Let’s look down the end and see if there’s anything obviously different.
So let’s see if I can angle this light.
So looking down there I can see some pins at the end.
Looking down here it looks to me like something’s gone out of place.
One of these pins looks slightly wonky to me.
Yeah so on this one it looks like a bunch of pins are at the end.
And this one looks like there’s a horizontal pin, something’s got bent.
Let’s crack it open.
Must remember not to confuse my working one with the non-working one.
So this is the non-working one.
Is it easy to snap open?
Well getting somewhere it’s definitely glued.
So this is going to be, oh there we go, well that suddenly snapped open.
Well hopefully you can see the same problem I can see.
And I wonder can we bend that pin back into place?
Where’s my pliers and my tweezers?
Everything’s vanished on the desk, someone’s tidied up.
One moment.
Okay so in theory it should just be a case of putting this back into place.
And how does it work?
So it looks like they’re kind of bent around.
Yeah, I mean, oops, oh dear.
Well that’s probably no longer fixable so we’ve lost a bit of this pin.
Yeah so it looks like what normally happens,
actually let’s put a card in because you can see exactly what happens with these things.
So the card slides in and you can see
that these little bottom things on these wires connect to the pads on the card.
And obviously this one, it’s not going to work anymore is it?
Because we’ve lost the bottom bit of the connector.
Now I don’t think it’s possible to reattach that.
Should go something like there.
I wonder, maybe you could do a bit of solder to reconnect it?
Well let’s take this card out, let’s have a look.
Should go exactly there.
I know, let’s get this under the microscope and I reckon with a little blob of solder
we might be able to fix it.
It’s unlikely but let’s give it a go.
Right, so here’s the repair we’re going to try and do.
So we have this bit of metal here, this is surprisingly awkward.
So that little bit of metal that I had needs to be reattached to this bit of metal here.
So in theory what we should be able to do is take this bit of metal,
stick it back here, put a blob of solder on it, and oh jeez, where’s it gone?
I’ve lost it, oh no, found it again.
Right, before we lose anything I’m going to stick everything down and let’s give this a go.
Now I’ve just realised that normally I hold my soldering iron in my right hand
and tweezers in my left.
So I’ve got this completely the wrong way round.
Let’s turn it around and then hopefully my right.
Hang on, do I hold my soldering iron in my left hand?
Tweezers, yeah, I need to turn this round.
Sorry, I’m just forgetting left from right there, let’s put this back on
and I’ll then find the right place.
Okay, there’s our broken part.
Right, so let’s first put some very fine solder
and we’ll try and put some solder on the end of this pin.
So possibly that’s not the finest solder.
Let’s try that again.
Let’s get some fine solder, which we have here, very fine.
Got my soldering iron and let’s try
put some solder on the end here.
It’ll melt, damn you.
Okay, well oops, yeah, so we’ve got some solder on the end.
Now then, so I want to stick this to that.
Oh shoot.
Well, unfortunately, we’ve lost that for good.
It’s gone to the great component heaven on the floor.
So I’m going to bodge it.
So I’ve chopped off the end of a resistor
and I’m going to try and solder it to this little bit of wire here.
I don’t know if I’m anywhere near it.
Oh, there we go, that is actually soldered on.
Amazing.
Now, in theory, if I’ve got my directions correct and it’s bent in the right place,
then this bit of wire might make contact with the SD card.
Let’s stick one in and see what happens.
So SD card coming in now.
Right, is it actually making contact?
No, so we need to bend the wire.
So I need another pair of tweezers.
One second.
Okay, so I’ll come in here.
I’m going to hold up.
Let’s see if I can do this.
We will hold up this, I can get my tweezers in.
Okay, and then I will come in and try and bend this down.
I think we’re getting there.
I just need to bend this.
Right, I think that’s actually making contact.
So if we take the SD card out and then we put it back in.
Now, how are we going to test this?
Yeah, I think we might actually be good.
So I think there I’m just touching the copper and not the actual pin.
And then come in here, we’ve got continuity.
Let’s check we haven’t actually shorted these pins together.
So it’s that one.
No short.
All right, let’s stick it back together and I’m going to plug this into the computer
and we’ll see if it actually works.
So it’s back together.
I mean it doesn’t actually stay together.
The glue is obviously now broken and any of the pillars are gone.
But I do have an SD card inserted.
Let’s go on the computer, see if it works.
We’re going in, plugged in, holy crap it actually worked.
We’ve got our SD card working.
So I did a bit more under the microscope just to bend the pins around and re-solder them.
But we’ve actually got it working.
So in theory I should be able to erase this disc.
It seems to be completely empty.
So let’s just try formatting it as fat.
Let’s see if it works.
Well so far so good.
Oh operation failed.
Actually I’ve seen this before.
Let’s just erase it again.
But we’ll do it as Macos journaled.
No come on work.
Okay let’s try an SD card that I know definitely works.
Okay oh it’s working.
SD card.
Final Cut Pro just jumped up saying you’ve just inserted an SD card.
Let me import some stuff.
There we go.
SD card.
Here’s all the stuff on it.
Well I mean it’s not the nicest repair but it actually works.
I am amazed.
There we go.
Well that was interesting.
I’m not sure I’ll use this adapter.
I think I will stick to the shop bought one that hasn’t been hacked around by me.
But there you go.
That was kind of fun.