[wplug] OT- Jumpdrive

[Brandon Kuczenski]

On Fri, 8 Apr 2005, Doug Green wrote:

> Hey all-
> I¹ve got a defunked Lexar Jumpdrive. Plugging it in does nada- no flashy
> light on the drive, computers don¹t recognize it at all- regardless of OS,
> this thing just stopped working. Any ideas? Bad contact? If so, any ideas on
> how to fix it and recover my data??
> Thanks,
> Doug
>
>

Is it possible that it's simply a damaged power connection?  Small USB 
devices get power from the USB port, so if the power lead isn't making it 
from the USB port to the device, that would kill it.  A USB specification 
and a soldering iron (or at least a multimeter) may be of use.

I don't know about jump drives in particular, but it seems to me there 
should be no reason for a purely solid-state electronic device to fail 
except for physical damage (shock, chemicals, big nasty gouges on the 
circuit board).  In fact, my experience as an engineer suggests that even 
the danger of static discharge is a myth, or at least, severely 
overstated.

... google interlude ...

wow, information on jump drives' internals is surprisingly difficult to 
come by on google.  Maybe it should be a WPLUG project to open this 
ostensibly damaged device and put some pictures on the Web.  (with a tiny 
chance of actually fixing the thing besides...).  At least you can start 
with the USB spec: google for USB_20.pdf.  Section 6.5 seems to be about 
the wiring configuration.

missing my days of hardware hacking,
-Brandon