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TSOP56/48 NOR/NAND Clip Adapters for the FlashcatUSB xPort

ricktendo

Active Member
I have been searching for a solderless nand/nor clip solution for the FCUSB for some time now, that day has finally arrived!

https://zeigren.github.io/FlashcatUSB-xPort-Clip-Adapters/


Note: You will need to purchase the solderless clip adapters separately, info can be found on http://www.360-clip.com/
I have had success ordering clips from this website: https://www.ic2005.com/shop/

You can use the following:
360-Clip kit 48pins BLUE
UNI-Clip 48pin (Green)
UNI-Clip 56pin (Yellow)
E3 NOR Clip (you can find these on ebay)
 
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Very cool , i see this guy makes his adapters as well ...

Have you tried it in circuit yet on a device ?
 
Have you tried it in circuit yet on a device ?
I don't have mine yet so I cant say, will order them today. Here is a quote from developer on in circuit tests he preformed (I will ask if he can be more specific)

I have tested the ones I could in circuit, which are all the ones that work with PS3 NORs and NANDs. But considering that those work in circuit the other ones should as well.
 
I got the 360-Clip kit 48pins BLUE adapters but when the clip doesn't detect the chip at first try then it got corrupted how can I avoid this to happen? do I need to cut any circuit trace?, I am trying to avoid that the source nand chip get corrupted as the target one doesn't matter as it can be repogrammed as soon as the nand chip is detected.

Thanks In Advance
 
I am having the same problem mess up a few boxes like that already. It refused to boot up after i tried to read it on the board with the 360 48 nand clip. After the first few tried eventhough i could successfully read the nand chip seems its already copputed can’t boot. I tried to u 48 pin uni clip successfully on some boxes but cant read all for some reason
 
That's a bit weird, could you post pictures of your setups? Also close up pictures of the top and bottom of the 360 clip and the red adapter board that came with it?

Did either of you change the voltage on the xPort or power supply while it was connected? That could do it.

Even if the clip wasn't making good contact I wouldn't expect it to corrupt the NAND unless it had poor contact while writing to it. I've tried to read from NANDs lots of times with the clip not making good contact and haven't had a NAND get corrupted in the process. The ICs on the NAND adapters are just buffers for the control signals so I don't imagine those causing any problems. My best guess would be that for whatever reason the device is trying to write to the NAND while you're trying to read/detect it. Another thought I had is that maybe there are different versions of the 360 clip, looking at some pictures online some do look slightly different but I'm not sure if they're actually different.

As for the UNI clips working sometimes (besides all the stuff I cover in my troubleshooting guide) if it's the same device and the same model of NAND it might just be that the NAND is physically smaller. I'm not sure how much the people who designed the clips took into account the physical variations that both the NANDs and the clips themselves can have.

Oh yeah the ones I've tested in circuit are
  • TSOP48 NAND UNI (Type B) Adapter
  • TSOP48 NAND 360 (Type B) Adapter
  • TSOP48 NAND E3 (Type B) Adapter
  • TSOP56 NOR UNI (Type A) Adapter
  • TSOP56 NOR E3 (Type A) Adapter
The TSOP56 NOR UNI (Type B) Adapter and the TSOP48 NOR UNI (Type A) Adapter I was only able to test with a bare flash.

The power supply I've used at 1.5A and with the regulator it should work just fine up to 3A, but I designed it to primarily be used up to 2A. It can only do 2A at 5v before the current limiting kicks in.
 
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That's a bit weird, could you post pictures of your setups? Also close up pictures of the top and bottom of the 360 clip and the red adapter board that came with it?

Did either of you change the voltage on the xPort or power supply while it was connected? That could do it.

Even if the clip wasn't making good contact I wouldn't expect it to corrupt the NAND unless it had poor contact while writing to it. I've tried to read from NANDs lots of times with the clip not making good contact and haven't had a NAND get corrupted in the process. The ICs on the NAND adapters are just buffers for the control signals so I don't imagine those causing any problems. My best guess would be that for whatever reason the device is trying to write to the NAND while you're trying to read/detect it. Another thought I had is that maybe there are different versions of the 360 clip, looking at some pictures online some do look slightly different but I'm not sure if they're actually different.

As for the UNI clips working sometimes (besides all the stuff I cover in my troubleshooting guide) if it's the same device and the same model of NAND it might just be that the NAND is physically smaller. I'm not sure how much the people who designed the clips took into account the physical variations that both the NANDs and the clips themselves can have.

Oh yeah the ones I've tested in circuit are
  • TSOP48 NAND UNI (Type B) Adapter
  • TSOP48 NAND 360 (Type B) Adapter
  • TSOP48 NAND E3 (Type B) Adapter
  • TSOP56 NOR UNI (Type A) Adapter
  • TSOP56 NOR E3 (Type A) Adapter
The TSOP56 NOR UNI (Type B) Adapter and the TSOP48 NOR UNI (Type A) Adapter I was only able to test with a bare flash.

The power supply I've used at 1.5A and with the regulator it should work just fine up to 3A, but I designed it to primarily be used up to 2A. It can only do 2A at 5v before the current limiting kicks in.

I was able to recover the same router that would boot up when tried to detect the chip to read it. Its weird when I detect the chip and read the image the router wouldn’t boot up after, so I had to detect the chip again and write the same image that I read back to the router and bingo it boots up again.
 
That is weird but that's great you were able to get it working again. I'll see if I can make the same thing happen to try and figure out what would cause that.
 
In my case I removed the chip from the board read it wrote it back reinstalled back but it didn't boot up, but I really don't believe it has nothing to do with you adapter ( Zeigren ) I believe it has to be with some kind of security on the chip itself or on the board that as I try to detect it many times it get corrupted, I even removed the ICs from your adapter and jumper the contacts and still same problem, if I make contact with the chip at the first time it doesn't get corrupted but if I try a couples of time to detect it then it get corrupted.

Are you making in the future any adapter that can be use with the Delta Clip and the xPort?

Thanks for your support.
 
Very nice, I like how the pins are naked as it would probably fit some of the harder to reach areas.

Zeigren mentioned he had designed some solderless pin adapters but I do not know what became of this.
 
I like how the pins on the Delta Clip go in between the pins of the chip, that may be a more reliable solution

http---www.deltadesign.us-files-DeltaProbes1.pdf_-_Adobe_Reader-242x156.png
 
Dang, those are fancy and quite pricey. Pretty good solution though, definitely would be more reliable. I haven't tried making the clip I designed since it would be expensive/annoying to make, but not as expensive as the Delta clips. However the Delta clips are probably a much better design than what I had in mind.

If you have a clip in mind specifically I could design some adapter board for it, they have all the info I would need online already. I wouldn't really want to buy a Delta clip myself though just to test it. It also would probably be a bit pricey since I'm not sure if anyone else would buy one.
 
I got the 360-Clip kit 48pins BLUE and green adapters but when the clip doesn't detect the chip at first try then it got corrupted is there a way can you guys make a new clip for it that could work properly and that is not as expensive like the delta probe clip. most of the people are having the same problem. Any help? Please let me know. Thanks
 
Also, is there a way to find the flashcat usb pinout on the tm1602 instead of having the 360-clip kit
 
Did you already watch my videos and go through the troubleshooting guide?

What's the model of the flash you're trying to read and could you upload pictures of your setup? I take it you're working on an Arris TM1602? Unfortunately a better clip doesn't necessarily mean that this kind of thing won't happen, power issues and bus contention could still cause problems which is likely why some people are having corruption issues.

Hmm I don't think I mentioned this in my videos. To try and avoid power issues I would start out with directly connecting a power supply to the board, solder the power wires as close to the flash memory as possible. When you place the clip and connect the USB cables don't have the FlashcatUSB software open, let the board be powered for a little bit before opening up the software and trying to detect the flash. This can help avoid interrupting some startup routine if something is accessing it. If you have an oscilloscope or logic analyzer you could probe some of the data lines and see if something else is accessing the flash before trying to R/W to it.

You can look at the schematics on the parallel adapters page (http://www.embeddedcomputers.net/products/ParallelAdapters/) for pinouts.
 
Did you already watch my videos and go through the troubleshooting guide?

What's the model of the flash you're trying to read and could you upload pictures of your setup? I take it you're working on an Arris TM1602? Unfortunately a better clip doesn't necessarily mean that this kind of thing won't happen, power issues and bus contention could still cause problems which is likely why some people are having corruption issues.

Hmm I don't think I mentioned this in my videos. To try and avoid power issues I would start out with directly connecting a power supply to the board, solder the power wires as close to the flash memory as possible. When you place the clip and connect the USB cables don't have the FlashcatUSB software open, let the board be powered for a little bit before opening up the software and trying to detect the flash. This can help avoid interrupting some startup routine if something is accessing it. If you have an oscilloscope or logic analyzer you could probe some of the data lines and see if something else is accessing the flash before trying to R/W to it.

You can look at the schematics on the parallel adapters page (http://www.embeddedcomputers.net/products/ParallelAdapters/) for pinouts.
ok thanks for the help thanks
 
Hi.
I have a new project, copy solderless the information from a Toshiba flash tc58nvg0s3htai0 installed on a motherboard of an Arris modem, and copy it into a new one.

I have to buy the FlashcatUSB xPort, and I would like you to detail me all the adapters that I need, there are many different ones and I need help to select the right ones.

Thank you.
 
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