Every once in a while, and more so now than before, you’ll find a really neat chip with zero documentation. In [David]’s case, it’s a really cool USB 3.0 eMMC/ SD MMC controller. Use this chip, attach a USB port on one end, and some memory on the other, and you have a complete bridge. There are drivers, too. There are products shipping with this chip. The problem is, there is no data sheet. Wanting to use this chip, [David] turned to sandpaper to figure out the pinout of this chip.
The best example of a product that came with this chip is a simple board from the hardkernel store that happily came with fairly high resolution product photos. While waiting for these boards to be delivered, [David] traced the top layer of copper. This was enough to get an idea of what was going on, but the real work started when the boards arrived. These were placed in a flatbed scanner and carefully photographed.
The next step was to desolder all the parts, taking care to measure and catalog each component. Then, it’s off to sanding with 200 and 600 grit wet sandpaper. Slowly, the soldermask is removed and the top copper layer appears. After that, it’s just a matter of sanding and scanning, stacking all the layers together with your image processing software of choice.
There are a few caveats to hand-sanding a PCB to reverse-engineer the copper layers. First, it makes a mess. This is wet/dry sandpaper, though, and you can and should sand with water. Secondly, even pressure should be applied. We’re not sure if [David] was holding the sandpaper or not, but the best technique is to actually hold the board itself.
Despite a few problems, [David] did get the pictures of each copper layer. After assembling these images, he could make an Eagle part for an eMMC reader for his Nintendo Switch.
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