Interesting use of a salt solution to weep into the broken parts to make contact. I personally would be shitting diamonds if I was reduced to this, it seems like it would be way too easy to short out the board with this method, especially when the packaging is so badly mangled.
I probably would have tried slowly and carefully whittling away the plastic near where the bond wires used to be to try to expose some metal first before using this salt water bath idea, but if it works it works.
What is that circular kit with the stands and pins that he's using here? https://dontvacuum.me/rocketflashrecovery/needles-1.jpg
Reminds me of PCBite
> the rocket dropped unchecked and burried [sic] itself 3 meters underground.
Very impressive! I wonder at what speed it impacted. I tried reading the chart at the bottom but I'm not sure what "axial" velocity is—probably not vertical speed given it drops over time rather than rises as the rocket dropped.
I suppose you could take the derivative of the height at impact point but I'm too lazy.
Great writeup, cool photos, no ads. Thank you!
Dennis is also one of the (if not THE) leading vacuum robot hacker and makes https://github.com/dgiese/dustcloud. Amazing work.
Might be worth it to pot the flash chip in some epoxy or something. Heck, add another one and double it up for redundancy.
They should have first attempted going without VCC and GND. Just make sure CS# is hooked to ground and WP is hooked to VCC.
Both pads would have protection diodes to VCC/GND providing phantom power when tied to the appropriate rail. Plenty of chips work fine with phantom power.