I need some old head advice. Anyone have any tips for dealing with mini usb-b ports?
I am trying to troubleshoot an older board from a family member. It seems that it has intermitten connection issues. I haven’t been able to get it to connect at all… Just wondering what my options are here? Or if anyone knows any good resources.
The port is very loose. My first hunch is that I just need a whole new one. I am thinking over time the connection just got bad… I don’t have a lot of these cables anymore to test multiple.
Port is loose on the PCB, or the cable is loose in the port? If the former, see if it’s a good candidate to reflow. If the latter, you can try gently squeezing it some pliers to get a touch more “bite,” which worked okay on a couple of non-keyboard Mini-USB peripherals I had back in the day, but yeah you’re probably looking at a replacement.
If there’s a REALLY good amount of room in the case, you could maybe get a small breakout board to convert to USB-C, but I understand it’s non-trivial and rare for that to be practical.
This. Male part from the cable has plenty of room and wobbles considerably. I thought about the pliers part, thanks for the validation. Plastic tip pliers will definitely come in handy!
I thought about trying to get some iso alcohol in there and scrubbing the connections a bit too.
I was able to test with another cable… and still nothing.
It’s the desoldering the whole thing that is killing me right now. I just redid all the switches for this family member’s board not to long ago dang 1800 layouts
More seriously, you might just be able to get under there with a thin tip and try to reflow the existing port. Fully desoldering with that plate in the way looks unpleasant.
Otherwise, I’m out of ideas. Completely possible the MCU itself is fried at this point as well. Perhaps your family member is ready for a new board. Prime Days starts tomorrow and I’m sure there will be some stiff but decent pre-built 1800s.
Now I’m curious though, what board are diagnosing here?
I sooo want to do this! But my gut is telling me something will go wrong and it will turn out badly. Better to just do it the slow right way
This is also not lost on me lol. The idea of a hot swap board for my sister-in-law is starting to sound really good right about now… I will have to convince her in the next CannonKeys sale and try and grab a Brutal V2 1800.
The board is an old KBDfans’ KBD19x! It honestly took me a little bit of research to remember the name. It has really been a while, and KBDfans history seems to be lost to time, at least on their site. Funny enough, this board has a little acrylic layer between the two alu. cases pieces. 100% this was cause RGB was cool back then, but it is actually a force break mod before force break
Yeah that’s gonna be a tough fix with the plate in the way, honestly though it looks like the port itself is soldered to the board pretty well so I doubt that port is working at all anymore. Now the question would be is just the port & could be fixed by replacing it or is it the MCU & the PCB is just fubar. If the plate wasn’t in the way I’d say to just bodge wire any USB port to the solder joints for the current port to make sure it’s the port not the PCB. But if you gotta desolder the switches might as well just replace the port at that point. Speaking of I have an old Sentraq 60% PCB that is borked but still has a working USB mini port you could salvage from it. It’s all yours if you need it man!
Wanted to learn myself up on the KBD19x, and ran across an older mechmarket post where someone “got it back in place”. Looks like they’re still active.
Plastic tip pliers will definitely come in handy!
