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I sold a jalapeno and it arrived there with the usb connector fallen off. I don't know how it happened.

Anyway, I got it back. When he first got it, it had great traces left. It seems the connector is soldered by the corners but the pins are just sprung down. I suggested he get it soldered. He took it to a computer? place instead of a real soldering place. The idiots destroyed what was left.

I wanted to solder just 2 wires from the board to the connector but they destroyed one of the important traces.

Anyone have any suggestions?? Can I use it through jtag or xchain? Anyone want to salvage the chips?

It was fixable:

https://i.imgur.com/6PcGmSLl.jpg (http://imgur.com/6PcGmSL)

Now after the idiots:

https://i.imgur.com/qCr49nIl.jpg (http://imgur.com/qCr49nI)

Need a hot air surface solder device!

Try scraping away some of the soldermask from the traces to expose the copper. Or, solder the wires directly to the FTDI chip (Pin 6 = D-, Pin 7 = D+). You'll want to at least connect the GND pin to the connector also.

Theres no way I'm getting at those ftdi pins.

Do you think the trace starts at the top or bottom?

Maybe, Can you point out pin 6 and 7? I only need one. The other and ground I can get with the traces.

This may not work though. They may have inline resistors.

Doesn't look like there are any traces on the top layer, they may be on the bottom.

Pin 6 and 7 on the ftdi chip are facing the edge of the board. The pad on the very left on the side facing the board edge is pin 1 (this is shown on the chip with a dot in the corner). The pad to the right of that one is pin 2 and so on. You'll want to do a continuity test with a multimeter to make sure they are the right pins.

There does not appear to be any inline resistors.

Ok I wish I could solder to a resistor.

Can you open https://forums.butterflylabs.com/attachments/announcements/1328d1371408270-bitforce-sc-pcb-schematics-mainpcb.zip
And double check? I can't find altium designer viewer.

Are you in Texas?

No west

There's no way I'm soldering the ftdi chip. anyone want this thing?

How much do you want for it?

Maybe $500 half price

Ouch... someone might want to call Rodney Copperbottom to help.

No electronics fix it places near buy to pop that back on with heat gun?

it looks like the "repair guys" delaminated the traces and the mechanical support pads.

That was an easy fix before it was butchered and had the pads ripped off..

It's hard to look at.

I would guess your options are to

1. Try to get a repair from BFL
2. try to solder wires to where the usb pins go to-- onto the side of whatever tiny SMD resistor or cap... not going to be fun.

I would buy it to fix it, but saying $500 is "half price", you might want to check the real market, seeing how some are going for 2.5-4 BTC, and consdering this a damaged unit, with even further damage done while trying to fix it... If you care to be reasonable about what you're asking for it (if you want to sell it), send me a message -- I wouldn't go by eBay prices

Sure I'll auction here soon starting at 2 btc

Note to self: Be extra careful not to jam the USB cable into something while it's connected to the Jally.

So far I've never had this happen to me yet, and I've mined with tons of naked FPGA boards.

That style of smd usb mini connector is entirely too fragile... that's not the first instance I've seen of such a failure.

It's bull. Something like that must be through hole.

Can you take a better close up picture with good light and without flash? If there are tracks left you could easily scratch some of the insulation, and rework it with flux. That job was done by caveman though...

is it a 5 or a 7 ghs jalapeño?

If you are going to auction it I would start with a more humble price and see where it goes, like 1 btc, at a reasonable price I might be interested.

Exactly, if you were going to auction it, I'd say starting at 1BTC would be smarter, since it is damaged & it is going to take some work. As like I said earlier, they're going for 2.5BTC-4BTC randomly, especially now that people seem to be receiving them somewhat. Heck, there was a local on craigslist that sold one for $200 (with nothing wrong with it and damn it, I wish I had seen that sooner, I was a day late). So, used, broken but possibly fixable, I wouldn't ask near the going rate, even though that's the low side of the going rate. (That's my opinion and what I would do if i couldn't fix it and in your situation.)

http://imgur.com/JRrscF3

Yeah I said $500 when I thought it was more fixable. I'll auction it really low soon and let everyone know.

Had this happen to a Lorex baby monitor of mine.

I was able to fix it with a temp controlled soldering iron and a pencil thin tip. 

Ultimately, it will break again if you ever want to use it.  It's a weak point in the design...

Did you refund the buyer back fully? I mean its kinda the shipping fault, but also the buyers fault too...

Yeah he bought two. I refunded one fully. It was insured but I doubt usps will approve it. I can't show shipping broke it.

Just took a look at the pics. That repair is going to be fun. My guess is the repair person used a big soldering iron at way too high a temp, the pad just fell off. Probably easier to do a bypass wiring at this point.

Ah well. Do-able with air tools, but not simple. I've repaired blown up IGBT drivers that did things like that, at least there are no shorts inside the board :-)

And as a side note: I took apart my Jally this evening for the daily flashing of the code (can't help it, tweak tweak) and noticed that with the board on the floor and a USB cable plugged in that any pressure on the board would cause a serious amount of torque on the USB plug. So I put my board sideways so it would not break.

I could see that happening by accident. Pretty easily. So if you're tweaking, be careful of that connector outside the box; it has limited support.

C

I'll be honest, I would probably bid on it... I've got some creative ways of fixing things like this (as I've done in the past), but it's still a pretty decent crapshoot imo, putting that in perspective, I'm not sure how far I would go on bidding on it.

Good Lord! I've resoldered one of these sockets on a dash camera with a 60w unregulated braising soldering iron and done a better job than that! The dashcam also worked afterwards too. I'd get either a short socket on a cable and solder the lines direct to the traces or FTDI chip, or remount the socket to the PCB with glue then run some fine enameled wire to either the traces on the board or the FTDI chip...

Likewise, if for nothing else I can float off the BGAs and put them on my Jally. However like everything else in the bitcoin world, it's a matter of calculations:

Estimated chance of repair * value of unit in mining bitcoins=max price you should pay.

Given that difficulty is screaming up, time to repair needs to be factored in as well as these things are losing their ability to make value by the second. Then again that is reflected in "value of unit" :-)

And of course add in the "entertainment factor" for being able to play with one. But the emotional factor of "oooh I have a jally!" would be zero for me since I have one, so it will probably go to someone who wants a jally at any cost less than what you can get it for on Ebay.

I went through the same mental math with a block erupter on Tuesday. I'm going to strap it to my house's water pipe inlet and use it to pre-heat water, so it has a practical value (hah). :-)

C

Looks like the pads are totally gone.

Ask BFL for the other points on the board that are tied to the same nets as the USB pins.  Then, have someone that knows what they are doing solder small wires to those points, and then to a socket.

My Foxconn mini-PCs use a short pigtail and then a bulkhead connector on its own bracket for the external wifi antenna in order to avoid exactly this problem.

pretty much yea, I don't have one, so it would give me a reason to fix it and I do have some creative ideas on this one... I've repaired a lot of issues like this, but I've had some new things I've been wanting to try

I'll give ya US$50.00 for it. :o

AUCTION
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=309934.0

Glad to see it's going to auction. Did you try anything else on it before giving it up for a new home?

C

Nope tried insurance but no luck.