Urgent - CF drive broken

my girls an idiot and pushed one of my CF cards into my MPC the wrong way round. Its bent 3 of the pins in the back of the drive. Ive managed to bend two back into their original place with a knife, but one is proper deformed.

is it worth opening up my mpc to try and fix the drive myself or do you think i should just send it back to be serviced? can you just buy new drives?

cheers

Shylock wrote:my girls an idiot and pushed one of my CF cards into my MPC the wrong way round. Its bent 3 of the pins in the back of the drive. Ive managed to bend two back into their original place with a knife, but one is proper deformed.

is it worth opening up my mpc to try and fix the drive myself or do you think i should just send it back to be serviced? can you just buy new drives?

cheers

early last year my son did the same thing. so i thought hey i got this big warrenty so i'll call akai to send it in for repair. i was told bent/broken pins are not covered under the mfg warranty. so me being the computer tech that i am, i opened it and fixed it. i know there are places that sell the drive for you to replace yourself, so you may want to look into that.

any info on the model/number of the drive thats needed - cheers sparq

give he a good ol right to the jaw

**** it - i should just get rid of her

anyways

any more info yet sparq?

i'm not sure of the exact model number. try a search on here maybe it was stated. i know you're in the UK but you could probably get a quote from VST here in the states or just get a model number from them. or you can contact akai directly.

The easiest thing would be to take off the bottom plate and front plate of the MPC and use some long tweezers to straighten out the pins. If there is no hope like you say, then prepare yourself for some surgery:

The compact flash reader is just a dumb physical interface, which is a standard part found in cheap card readers everywhere. The down-side is that it uses surface mount for all the pins to connect to the PCB which is great for machines churning out thousands of parts but a pain to work with for humans. Electronics companies sell very very expensive soldering gear espeically for this, but they are basically concentrated hair-dryers. I have made my own ghetto surface mount soldering iron out of a heatgun and some tinfoil. the general idea is to create a flat nozzle with the tinfoil that is the exact width of the part you need to heat (ie the pins attached to the PCB). If you are quick and accurate, you can lift the card reader right off and replace it with a new one. This assumes you know a bit about soldering and have some kind of heat gun. If VST says they will fix it for about $150, i would do it. If you have more time than money, they proceed at your own risk. If you heat the board too much you can burn other components or lift the traces right off the board. Beware.

1. Take the bottom and front plates off to access the guts
2. unscrew the 3 nuts around the footswitch and phones jacks
3. undo all the screws that hold the CF and 3 jacks PCB (4 i think)
4. carefully pull this pcb out of the chassis and remove the ribbon cable carefully, being extra cautious not to get your fingers on any of the contacts
5. make your heatgun contraption with the tinfoil. Make sure you get a metal wire to secure the tinfoil to the metal base of the heatgun so the tinfoil doesn't fly off when you turn the air on.
6. heat the wire contacts of the CF reader on the PCB for 3-4 seconds. preheat your heatgun so it is hot before you even move in!
7. carefully lift the CF reader off when all the solder is liquid. don't force it, it should lift off with no force at all since all the solder should be melted. (note the posts that just physically hold the CF reader on. you will have to suck the solder out of those 4 posts beforehand)
8. find a cheap CF reader that has a pushbutton eject just like the one in the MPC and remove it carefully like you did the one on the MPC
9. place the good card reader in the slots on the PCB and lay all the pins on the contacts. make sure they all line up perfectly.
10. once all the pins are resting exactly on top of the traces on the PCB, heat all the traces quickly to melt the solder. (again make sure your heat gun is preheated). at this point all the pins should sink into the traces with the solder, or you might have to push a bit on the top of the CF reader case.

Alternatively, if you have a fine-tipped soldering iron (like a real one w/ temperature control) you can use nail clippers to snip all the wires and remove the old card reader, then individually remove the pins one by one with the soldering iron. Then buy a card reader part from mouser or digikey etc. (about $3) and place the card reader on top like before and individually solder on each pin. This might be the safer route if you already have a good iron. This method might be easier as well since you won't have to carefully remove the good card reader.

Either one will work. Sorry there is no easy solution (unless you have VST do it!) Post back if you find out how much VST charges for the repair.

spiral wrote:The easiest thing would be to take off the bottom plate and front plate of the MPC and use some long tweezers to straighten out the pins. If there is no hope like you say, then prepare yourself for some surgery:

if you go this route, you have to extremely careful. those pins are delicate and you don't want to snap them.

i know i am but if you're not comfortable working around circuitry and/or not very computer literate (hardware) i would suggest you not do what spiral said. but if you do feel comfortable, then what spiral said is a good thing for you to do on your own.

i'm just saying you have to be very careful.

Agreed. I personally would let VST do it.

spiral wrote:Agreed. I personally would let VST do it.

and make the woman pay for it

well - it turns out - that if it was sent to vst, they wouldnt do it anyways - theyd just replace the whole pcb with the cf drive and jacks and everything

gonna contact akai and see if i cant get hold of one of the new pcbs - dont want to **** around with that soldering - far too tech for me