Looking At A Real Fake Raspberry Pi RP2040 Board

January 15, 2026 by Maya Posch 21 Comments

Since the RP2040 microcontroller is available as a stand-alone component, it’s easy enough for third parties to churn out their own variations — or outright clones of — the Raspberry Pi Pico. Thus we end up with for example AliExpress sellers offering their own versions that can be significantly cheaper than the genuine article. The ones that [electronupdate] obtained for a test and decapping session cost just $2.25 a pop.

As can be seen in the top image, the board from AliExpress misses the Raspberry Pi logo on the silkscreen for obvious reasons, but otherwise appears to feature an identical component layout. The QSPI Flash IC is marked on the die as BY250156FS, identifying it as a Boya part.

Niggles about flash ROM quality aside, what’s perhaps most interesting about this teardown is what eagle-eyed commentators spotted on the die shot of the RP2040. Although on the MCU the laser markings identify the RP2040 as a B2 stepping, the die clearly identifies it as an ‘RP2 B0’ part, meaning B0 stepping. This can be problematic when you try to use the USB functionality due to hardware USB bugs in the B0 and B1 steppings.

As they say, caveat emptor.

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Fixing A KS Jive DAB Radio With A Dash Of Fake ICs

January 13, 2026 by Maya Posch 14 Comments

The radio unit after a successful repair. (Credit: Buy it Fix it, YouTube)

The exciting part about repairing consumer electronics is that you are never quite sure what you are going to find. In a recent video by [Mick] of Buy it Fix it on YouTube the subject is a KS Jive radio that throws a few curve balls along the way. After initially seeing the unit not power on with either batteries or external power, opening it up revealed a few loose wires that gave the false hope that it would be an easy fix.

As is typical, the cause of the unit failing appears to have been a power surge that burned out a trace and obliterated the 3.3V LDO and ST TDA7266P amplifier. While the trace was easily fixed, and AMS1117 LDOs are cheap and plentiful, the amplifier chip turned out to be the real challenge on account of being an EOL chip.

The typical response here is to waddle over to purveyors of scrap hardware, like AliExpress sellers. Here [Mick] bought a ‘new’ TDA7266P, but upon receiving his order, he got suspicious after comparing it with the busted original. As can be seen in the top image, the markings, logo and even typeface are wildly different. Thus [Mick] did what any reasonable person does and x-rayed both chips to compare their internals.

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Be Wary Of Flash-less ESP32-C3 Super Mini Boards

December 23, 2025 by Maya Posch 30 Comments

Everyone loves tiny microcontroller boards, and the ESP32-C3 Super Mini boards are no exception. Unfortunately if you just casually stroll over to your nearest online purveyor of such goods to purchase a bunch of them, you’re likely to be disappointed. The reason for this is, as explained in a video by [Hacker University] that these boards are equipped with any of the variants of the ESP32-C3. The worst offender here is probably the version with the ESP32-C3 without further markings, as this one has no built-in Flash for program storage.

Beyond that basic MCU version we can see the other versions clearly listed in the Espressif ESP32-C3 datasheet. Of these, the FN4 is already listed as EOL, the FH4AZ as NRND, leaving only the FH4 and FH4X with the latter as ‘recommended’ as the newest chip revision. Here the F stands for built-in Flash with the next character for its temperature rating, e.g. H for ‘High’. Next is the amount of Flash in MB, so always 4 MB for all but the Flash-less variant.

Identifying this information from some online listing is anything but easy unless the seller is especially forthcoming. The chip markings show this information on the third row, as can be seen in the top image, but relying solely on a listing’s photos is rather sketchy. If you do end up with a Flash-less variant, you can still wire up an external Flash chip yourself, but obviously this is probably not the intended use case.

As always, caveat emptor.

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Flash Memory: Caveat Emptor

May 13, 2018 by Brian McEvoy 29 Comments

We all love new tech. Some of us love getting the bleeding edge, barely-on-the-market devices and some enjoy getting tech thirty years after the fact to revel in nostalgia. The similarity is that we assume we know what we’re buying and only the latter category expects used parts. But, what if the prior category is getting used parts in a new case? The University of Alabama in Huntsville has a tool for protecting us from unscrupulous manufacturers installing old flash memory.

Flash memory usually lasts longer than the devices where it is installed, so there is a market for used chips which are still “good enough” to pass for new. Of course, this is highly unethical. You would not expect to find a used transmission in your brand new car so why should your brand new tablet contain someone’s discarded memory?

The principles of flash memory are well explained by comparing them to an ordinary transistor, of which we are happy to educate you. Wear-and-tear on flash memory starts right away and the erase time gets longer and longer. By measuring how long it takes to erase, it is possible to accurately determine the age of chip in question.

Pushing the limits of flash memory’s life-span can tell a lot about how to avoid operation disruption or you can build a flash drive from parts you know are used.