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[Q] Blackstone main board required

Greetings one and all. Am looking for two main CPU boards for a HTC Blackstone (the board with the USB socket on it). Had a scout around on ebay and could only find the SIM and Micro SD assembly. Interestingly the charge LED doesn't come on but have checked the battery with a multimeter and it's definitely receiving a charge. Other thing I'm gonna try is a SMD hot air station and reflow the main ICs under the RF shields to see if it's a dodgy solder joint somewhere. But if anyones got these boards surplus to requirements then I'd be interested. Thanks

fossberry said:
Greetings one and all. Am looking for two main CPU boards for a HTC Blackstone (the board with the USB socket on it). Had a scout around on ebay and could only find the SIM and Micro SD assembly. Interestingly the charge LED doesn't come on but have checked the battery with a multimeter and it's definitely receiving a charge. Other thing I'm gonna try is a SMD hot air station and reflow the main ICs under the RF shields to see if it's a dodgy solder joint somewhere. But if anyones got these boards surplus to requirements then I'd be interested. Thanks
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you can buy it from http://www.htcrepairparts.com/motherboard-for-htc-touch-hd-p-3213.html

nice find!
but just as i suspected a single spare part is more expensive than buying an entire used blackstone from ebay. the 2nd hand price of the device dropped to 80-150$ (depending on the condition and accessories) over the last 6 months, with the progressing "death" of winmo.
if i were you, i would either get a 2nd battery and external charger for 20$ to bypass the usb port, get a used blackstone as a source for all kinds of spare parts or get a new device altogether, depending on how much money you are willing to spend and how much you like the blackstone, but that single spare part for 170$ is just ridiculously overpriced.

Micro USB connector with rubber cover and small as possible...what's available

I'm trying to mount a powermat inside a Galaxy S2 phone to allow wireless charging.
Unfortunately the logic circuit of the S2 insists that the charging of the S2 is routed via the USB connector else the charging isn't detected leading to potential overcharge situations.
Therefore I'm looking for the smallest Micro USB connector available (height wise) that I can wire the powermat wires to. I'd prefer the Micro USB connector to come with a rubberised cover as I use the Case Mate Tough cases for the phone so a connector that was almost flush with that case and also rubberised would be perfect.
I'm in the UK so UK sourcing would be preferable but all suggestions appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

Anyone have any ideas?

You can look at buying some just raw connectors like
http://www.newark.com/fci/10104109-...ce-mount/dp/82R7423?in_merch=Popular Products
Or do some research and find some other ones with different mounting options. The thing is it is hard to get much smaller.
http://www.newark.com/jsp/search/br...etricAttributeId=&prevNValues=422+2203+202174

Can't you wire it from the inside? By soldering directly to the pins of mUSB connector on the mainboard?

I hadn't thought of that....not sure my soldering skills are good enough either given how small the components we'd be dealing with here.

That is an option but if you don't have the tools I wouldn't mess with it. Those boards are dense and unless you have a fine enough tip it is going to be hard to make a good connection.

pinsb said:
I hadn't thought of that....not sure my soldering skills are good enough either given how small the components we'd be dealing with here.
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Well I can tell you from experience that they are small. ~0.25mm. Look at a how big a mm is on a ruler and cut that into 1/42 and that's what you are looking to solder to. You would need some fine wire that is shielded so it doesn't short and it requires some solid soldering skills.

I used to do this for a living. You could call up some local jewelers or repair shops and see if they have a laser welder. Ask them if they do custom work. Though it would have to be a relatively big place though, as those machines runs thousands of dollars. I worked for Jostens.

Hi pinsb,
Did you ever find anything? I am looking for the same thing for a slightly different purpose. I want to put a usb circuit inside an enclosure with the phone and don't want to have the connector sticking out the side.

Place to store a spare MicroSD card

So on the non lte version of the tablet there is a slot that would normally hold the microsim card on the lte version. For us, that slot is filled by a plastic blanking plate. Anyone have any idea how to get it out? I've tried prising it but no joy. MicroSD cards cost more the larger they are and I'd like to experiment with keeping a spare in that slot if I can just open it up and snapping them over when needed!

SANGER_A2 said:
So on the non lte version of the tablet there is a slot that would normally hold the microsim card on the lte version. For us, that slot is filled by a plastic blanking plate. Anyone have any idea how to get it out? I've tried prising it but no joy. MicroSD cards cost more the larger they are and I'd like to experiment with keeping a spare in that slot if I can just open it up and snapping them over when needed!
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Honestly, I would place a guess, that if you remove the back cover, you would probably have better access to the module (which generally are removable in most tabs).
However, even it you were to remove the "Plug", so to speak, my guess is that your SD card would probably slide inside the tab, thus rattling around and more than likely short out something on the main board

Moscow Desire said:
Honestly, I would place a guess, that if you remove the back cover, you would probably have better access to the module (which generally are removable in most tabs).
However, even it you were to remove the "Plug", so to speak, my guess is that your SD card would probably slide inside the tab, thus rattling around and more than likely short out something on the main board
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I'm sure that if we get the back of the tablet off, then it would be easy to enclose the microsim slot with hot glue or something so the SD can't come out and it could be cushioned with electrician's tape or something to reduce rattling. However, I don't want to spoil my lovely expensive tablet by taking it to bits! This would be much harder without dismantling and may be impossible without getting out the blanking plate anyway. At some point I'll just have to bite the bullet and buy the expensive 64GB MicroSD at some point if I run out of space for videos etc.

Joying Sofia Pioneer amp chip upgrade

I will be using this thread to track my upgrade of the amplifier chip on the Intel Sofia based Joying units.
I chose the Pioneer PA2030A but apparently you can also use the TDA7850 chip.
To quote @kampfschachtel:
If your speakers are 4 ohm I would use the Pioneer as it has more power at 4 ohm, if you have 2 ohm speakers (like eg a lot of the BMW ones) then the TDA7850 is your choice. Be aware you get orginals as they are lot low quality clones on the market.

Joying radio and new Pioneer PA2030A chip
You can see in the back where the amp chip is anchored in the metal frame with two screws. The metal frame provides some cooling.

First step: take unit apart using the 2 screws - 1 on each side. At this step, say goodbye to your warranty!

1 more screws on the back and then you can take the top cover off

Behold! The internals!
Slide up the 2 USB cables from the frame and carefully disconnect the single USB cable from the board, the ribbon cable from the motherboard (which takes video and touch input to the screen) and then on the back, unscrew the GPS antenna from the frame. The other bundle of mic, radio antenna and USB cable just keep as is, as it's more work to untangle the wires.
NOTE! The ribbon cable uses a slide-lock to keep the cable in. Carefully pull the brown slider back and then remove the ribbon from the slot. Don't force it or you may damage it and will need to get a new ribbon.

Your can see the cables that were removed.
Next remove the following 4 screws and also the smaller 2 screws holding the amp chip to the frame

You can see the metal bracket that holds the amp chip falls off. Notice in the back, that the amp chip is held to the frame with some thermal paste. We'll need some more of that later when the chip is replaced.
Remove 2 more bolts that hold the motherboard - on the corners. 1 you can see where my screwdriver is resting.

Carefully pry out the board from the case.
You can see the chip we'll replace and the solders in the back that we'll have to work with.
NOTE: interesting marking on the board - PX3-MAIN. Other folks might know more on this, but did they re-use the main host board from their other stereos with minor modifications? Looks like it.

Next step - warm up the solder gun!
Time to go find my solder gun... dammit! Where did I put it? Haha!

You're going to want to pay attention to how high the chip sits on the board as the new one will have to be at a similar height to bolt back to the metal frame.

---removed---

Another side note... It looks like the SD card reader board has space for another SD card reader slot. If one wants dual SD card, maybe another soldering project down the line? The metal frame is also pre-cut for the second slot so it would be an easy project!

Making slow progress on removing the chip. A nice solder sucker would be great right now!

It looks easy, but that soldering looks the most difficult part of the job, how can you loose it with so many pins on the board, and i suppose you can do that by every chinese android radio?

Flemischguy said:
It looks easy, but that soldering looks the most difficult part of the job, how can you loose it with so many pins on the board, and i suppose you can do that by every chinese android radio?
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You take your time Slowly heat up pins and you go around to each pin... over and over again.

bogdi1988 said:
You take your time Slowly heat up pins and you go around to each pin... over and over again.
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Do you use a classic soldering on electric? I think that i would use a soldering on gas, which is instantly hot and blow hot air over the pins (and faster)
Just a thought

So I got the chip soldered. Ran a quick test and got audio, but the channels are all over the place. Gotta trace all my solders to make sure I didn't mess up anything.

Flemischguy said:
Do you use a classic soldering on electric? I think that i would use a soldering on gas, which is instantly hot and blow hot air over the pins (and faster)
Just a thought
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Yea, I did use a classic one.
I might have to re-do all solders.

Well, until I figure out my solder stuff... feedback on what I was able to test as it was.
Audio was significantly more powerful! Quite a difference! I'll spend some more time on this over the next couple days.
It is a tricky mod, but worth it!

I think my chip might be faulty so I got a new one coming in next week. I'll update this post next week when I get it

I9505 keeps rebooting

Hi!
It suddenly rebooted once, I thought the LineageOS was too much for it since I have upgraded it a month ago (maybe two)
Then I had troubles downgrading to a stock FW which was a Lollipop 501 if I'm right. I had to restart the procedure with Odin 2-3 times until it worked.
To be able to get through the initial setup I had to let the phone rest for an hour to let it cool down.
I'm guessing the soldering between the board and the chip got loose or the contacts are imperfect because of the constant overheating.
Can it be? Would a threatment with a heat gun solve this? My PS4 was damaged because of bad cooling / overheating and I could repair it with the heat gun before. Easy-peasy.
It was borrowed from a friend living faaaar away, hence I haven't tried it with the S4 yet. I'm not sure tho' if I can use such a heat on a tiny phone board as on a much bigger PS4 board. (Even the cpu is bigger than the whole mobo of the phone)
One thing is sure, a hair dryer - with maximum heat dead close for 5 minutes - didn't do the trick But that's not even close to the performance of a heat gun.
Thanks!

Hair dryers don't get hot enough to melt solder. A heat gun would work but you have one big issue to overcome: the heat shield. You have to remove the heat shield from the motherboard, then wrap the entire board except the SoC in aluminum foil before applying the heat gun. However, I don't believe a heat gun will help you in this case.
I would get the device checked out by someone who repairs smartphones before attempting to take the device apart to apply the heat gun. The symptoms you are having are not consistent with a SoC lifting from the board.

Strephon Alkhalikoi said:
Hair dryers don't get hot enough to melt solder. A heat gun would work but you have one big issue to overcome: the heat shield. You have to remove the heat shield from the motherboard, then wrap the entire board except the SoC in aluminum foil before applying the heat gun. However, I don't believe a heat gun will help you in this case.
I would get the device checked out by someone who repairs smartphones before attempting to take the device apart to apply the heat gun. The symptoms you are having are not consistent with a SoC lifting from the board.
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thanks!
what else can it be? i can do a thing or two with electronic devices even if i don't have exact training in the field in question. let's put it this way: if you tell me what to do i can do it. also the board has got about 5 bigger parts and a bunch of small ones. it isn't "rocket surgery"
i don't know about heat shield, i removed the mobo and it looks just like this:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/Samsung_Galaxy_S4_I9505_mainboard.jpg
my second thought is that the memory (call it whatever you want) is at its lifecycles end? (too many read/writes, stuff like that?)
it isn't about software that's for sure. as the lcd works i can just buy another s4 broken in two with working mobo and deal with it that way. faster and seems easier (maybe also cheaper) if the heat gun thing wouldn't work.

The side of the board where the SIM card and MicroSD card slots are is the heat shield I was referring to. The card slots are actually stuck to the top of the shield using adhesive. Underneath that shield is the SoC and flash memory. In order to get the board to appear like the picture you likely removed the heat shield.
As to what it could be? A faulty surface mounted component on the board, but without a tech to diagnose it there's no way to know which component failed. If you can frankenstein one good phone out of two, assuming both phones are the same model, I would. The cost to repair it simply isn't worth it today.

Strephon Alkhalikoi said:
The side of the board where the SIM card and MicroSD card slots are is the heat shield I was referring to. The card slots are actually stuck to the top of the shield using adhesive. Underneath that shield is the SoC and flash memory. In order to get the board to appear like the picture you likely removed the heat shield.
As to what it could be? A faulty surface mounted component on the board, but without a tech to diagnose it there's no way to know which component failed. If you can frankenstein one good phone out of two, assuming both phones are the same model, I would. The cost to repair it simply isn't worth it today.
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yeah that's what i thought.
i think you are wrong with the sim-sdcard compartment. that i have already exchanged once when i had this "no sim card detected phone rebooting" annoying issue. under this sim-sd part is nothing but the plain board with a 2 sided sticky layer. but no chips, no nothing.
but it doesn't really matter since i'll just get a new(er) phone and that's it.
thanks anyway for the help!
cheers
g

@rigo88: You're most likely right. It was three years ago that I had replaced my SIM card tray, and I'm not about to take my S4 apart again just to check, even though it no longer serves as my daily driver.
I wish you luck with your new device.