I don’t remember how old I was when I acquired a Griffin Powermate but I do remember how cool it looked with it’s blue light and it’s solid feel.

At some point in the past, oh, I don’t know… 12 years… the Powermate stopped working. I tried taking it apart once and couldn’t figure out how it was put together. It ended up at the bottom of a box of what should have become ewaste 10 years ago.

But somehow, it kicked around for a while and today I found it again. And decided to take another whack at it.

Honestly, I’m appalled that the bastards are still making these things… even more so when I learned what was inside the thing:

The board is basically a USB enabled microcontroller with a 3 pin rotary encoder on it. Woo. The MCU is a CY7C63743.

After finally getting it open with a razor blade between the aluminum and plastic housing boundary, I saw that the green usb wire (SCLK or D+ depending on the data sheet) was entirely disconnected. It didn’t even look like it had ever been soldered in it’s life.

I found the MCU’s data sheet, poked the board with a continuity tester, and figured out where the wires had to go (They all popped off when I yanked the board out).

A bit of soldering later and it seems to be working just great.

The hot glue gun is heating up to make the joints a little stronger and to seal the case back up again.

All in all, a good bit of repair work to relive that nostalgic blue glow…

Griffin insides:

Griffin insides close up of shitty solder job (those traces lifted with NO heat, I swear):

And it’s working again!: