mp3 flash recovery

posted Nov 16th 2006 11:03am by Will O'Brien
filed under: misc hacks, peripherals hacks

[Bart] sent in his efforts to recover the flash data on a mysterious mp3 player he found laying about. He successfully built an interface using a AVR/ATmega setup to get access to the data. This could be a viable way to recover data from broken thumbdrives – but it’s probably easier to swap the flash chip onto another drive. The Chipquik stuff sounds interesting – cold SMD chip desoldering. Given the cost, I’m not sure just how cost effective it is compared to buying a rework station.

[If you haven't already, check out the Hackaday Design Challenge Fabienne's nano is one prize and I'll be announcing more prizes as soon as I've got them in hand.]

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Comments [10]

10 Responses to mp3 flash recovery

Bart Bilos says:

November 16, 2006 at 11:43 am

Well a rework station is expensive if you compare it to chipquik. Especially for one off jobs like this, and for hobbyists. At work we use it for repairs in the field where we usually use gas powered soldering irons and chipquik.

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felix domke says:

November 16, 2006 at 1:05 pm

It depends. There are really cheap chinese hot air stations for about $150 which are good for desoldering TSOP and QFP, and even BGA if you dare. Yes, they don’t offer what $3000+ IR stations devices offer, but often it’s exactly what you need.

For TSOP i still prefer tweezers, but i know they are not soo cheap. But definitely worthy.

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Tabajara says:

November 16, 2006 at 11:47 pm

404′ed…any mirrors?

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whitephatt says:

November 17, 2006 at 2:21 pm

…I sure wish his project page worked.

Without flaming too much.. You would think that someone as brillant as that would use a decent hosting service. :)

-White

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Bart Bilos says:

November 17, 2006 at 5:15 pm

I just hosted it on a personal webspace, yes its quite bad. Sorry for that.

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bigall says:

November 18, 2006 at 4:17 am

Please e-mail me to get some free hostingspace without any banners and unlimited bandwith. Servers are located in the Netherlands.

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Bart Bilos says:

November 18, 2006 at 4:50 am

At 6:
Can you please send my your email adress, its always useful to have some bandwidth, and i just get 15 hits a day. Its just I got slashdotted by hackaday, didnt know that the interest would be so big.

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bigall says:

November 18, 2006 at 5:42 am

Well, you can e-mail me at temp [at] zoutkorrel.nl
I’ll remove this temporary e-mail address after you’ve contacted me, and then I’ll send you my real e-mail address.

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Wim L says:

November 18, 2006 at 2:40 pm

Yeah, chipquik is less compelling now that there are cheap hot-air machines available. I bet it still has its uses though.

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Bart Bilos says:

November 19, 2006 at 5:44 am

Put a mirror up here: http://bart.lambonet.com/projects/mysterymp3/mysterymp3.html

At 9:
Yeah I have seen the new cheap chinese hot air machines. They usually have the brand AOYUE, I am using one of their temperature regulated stations. It works quite well, nice high quality tips too that dont corrode too fast. So maybe next time.

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