help, broke usb connector on proto board!!

laser-vector

Hi, I just built a circuit on a USB proto board, i had a usb cable plugged into it when I went to install it into an enclosure. To my dismay I found out after it was too late that the four ground tabs had not been soldered and the connector popped right off. Oh well I thought, there's probably some vias on the board that I could just solder the wires of the USB cable to. Nothing..
Then I thought maybe I could work around this issue by using a prop plug.. but I can't even seem to find the resn pin on the board, so can't fix it that way either.

Breaking the USB connector has got to be a common thing, but how do you fix it????

Oldbitcollector (Jeff)

You can tap into the RES line by carefully soldering a wire to the right of the reset switch, connect to 30,31 and Vss and you are set for a Propplug.



OBC

jeff-o

How broken is the connector? If you've torn off pads then you may be stuck. But if the connector itself is the only thing that's broken, then you should be able to replace it. I'm pretty sure this is the replacement part, but I'd need to check my own board at home to be sure: LINK

Duane Degn

You can also scrape some solder resist off the traces on the bottom of the board.



I used the USB section of a USB Proto Board as a Prop Plug. I connected right angle headers to both the USB section and the remain board.



Now I can also use the USB portion on other Proto Boards. Which is a good thing because I ruined a couple of my Prop Plugs (and a couple of Propeller chips) recently. Right know this is my only working Prop Plug.

The ground trace needs to be jumped to the ground connection of the USB (note the jumper wire).

Granz

@Duane,

Great idea; I love this idea. Thanks for the photo-tour and the description.