How to fix broken circuit board

Are you saying these two parts used to be a single board and you want to try and repair it back to one part again?

If that's the case, then boy, that's quite a question. Physically yes, I imagine it would be possible, but in practice, no it's really not feasible. The problem is, every circuit trace on both sides of those two pieces is broken and you have to solder a wire across the break for every single one to reconnect the circuits. And in order to make sure you've covered all the breaks, you really need a circuit diagram and a board layout in order to verify you've got everything put back together correctly.

So yeah, with many hours of work, a microscope and some very precise soldering, it could theoretically be done, but why would you want to spend that much time on a part when you can simply buy a used one for $10. I mean, I'm all for repair vs. replace, but at some point you have to admit it's not worth the effort.

Okay Dominic, now we have a better idea of what you want and can perhaps give you a better answer.

First off, a couple of things. A) Forget fixing the existing board. It is too badly broken to be worthwhile. B) Stop trying to do anything with it like plugging it in. You will only make things worse and possibly burn out something that may be needed if you want your data back.

The next thing we want you to do is get us another picture, this time of the other side of the board(s). I went online and found a picture of an intact circuit board for the Sansa Clip, and here's what it's supposed to look like.

See that big chip on the right hand side? That's a Sandisk SDTNMMAHSM-002G flash memory chip. That's where all your .wav files are located and saved, so that's the only thing you care about on the trainwreck of your device. In this case it's a 2GB part; yours may be different depending on what model of Clip you got; if I'm not mistaken there may be 4 and 8 GB versions as well. We'll be able to tell if you post a picture of yours.

Anyway, there are two practical ways to get your files off the chip, assuming the chip is intact and hasn't been damaged either physically or electrically. The first method, and the one I would lean toward, would be to buy another Clip of the same model as the broken one. Find a technician who can solder that chip and have them remove the chips from both boards and solder the chip from the broken board onto the good one. Viola, you've got a working player with all your files on it.

The other way to do that would be to find someone with a flash chip reader that supports that particular chip. Again, you'll need a technician (hopefully the same person as the one with the programmer) to unsolder the chip from your broken board and insert it into the chip reader. At that point it should be possible to download the contents of the flash chip but it may or may not be straight-forward to pull the files off it. It all depends on whether Sansa used a standard file system on the chip or brewed up something of its own.

A third method occurs to me; there are compact flash memory cards out there that use the same chip as your MP3 player and it should be possible to do the same thing with them that I talked about doing with a second Clip device; i.e., take the memory chip out of the CF card and solder in the one from your broken player. You should may then be able to plug the CF into an appropriate reader/adapter and access it from a PC. Of course, once again that depends on whether Sansa used a standard filesystem or not.

So no matter what you choose to do, you still need someone to take the chip off the old board. My advice would be to take the first suggestion of buying another Clip device to use to hold the original flash chip. As I mentioned previously, you can get a used one for $10 USD that should do the job.

As far as where to go, iFixit isn't going to help you as they don't do repairs themselves; their whole focus is giving you the information and tools you need to do your own repairs. I do have to admit this one is probably beyond most of us home repair DIY-ers, but lucky for you this same topic has been discussed previously.

How To De-Solder A 48-Pin NAND Flash Memory Chip and Recover Files - Sandisk Sansa Clip - iFixit

One of our moderators, Jesse Hooton (@hootonberg) answered that previous question as follows.

If you’re trying to DIY this repair, don’t attempt yourself. Data recovery and microsoldering require a lot of skill and knowledge to do properly. Check with iPad Rehab or Rossman Repair Group or even Drive Savers. Jessa of iPad Rehab and Louis of Rossman Repair are both renowned and skilled technicians. They both have youtube channels if you wish to check them out.

So there you go; get us a picture of the other side of your broken board and we'll see if pulling the chip and putting it on another device is even feasible. After that you'll want to buy a spare Clip to sacrifice to the repair gods and locate someone to do the repair. Check with the people Jesse suggested and hopefully you'll be able to get your precious files back.

Based on your new pictures, I would say there's a good chance that the memory chip can be salvaged from the board. You said you already have another Clip so you could disassemble it and find someone to unsolder the flash chip from the broken one and solder it onto your replacement device.

You can try contacting the people Jesse mentioned, or you can call around to local repair shops and see if you can locate someone who has the experience and equipment to do that job. Anyone who is reasonably experienced with a hot air soldering station should be able to do that job without much trouble; it's a straight-forward repair and really shouldn't even cost you all that much.

I can't tell from your photo what size memory chip yours is, but I suspect it doesn't matter. If you're interested you can either try a different angle and/or different lighting so we can read the label on the lower chip, or else if you can make out the last part of the number yourself you'll be able to tell. The one I found is a 2GB part and the part number is -002G. See the connection here? I'm almost certain the 4GB part is going to have a part number that ends in -004G.