[Galaxy Tab 10.1 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jacampb2:
FWIW, I am not giving up hope :D I just needed to get to bed to get some rest before going into work a set of 12hr midnights. UPS dropped the connectors at 2:30pm EST, and I only spent an hour messing with it as I was supposed to already be in bed, so testing was limited but I knew I wouldn't be able to get any sleep if I didn't give it one try...

To answer as many questions as I can ATM:

Visually, solder flowed on all pins. There are no solder bridges. I did the work under 10x mag and verified under 40x. I did not electrically test the pins. I did not have the time for it today. I am as certain as I can be based on experience that the solder connections are good. I will check continuity as soon as I have some free time again. At the same time, I will try to determine if there are any signs of life at the connector itself.

I checked for the card to have mounted at mnt/sdcard/ at mnt/sdcard/storages and at mnt/usbdrives. Nothing anywhere and no signs that the tablet even tried to mount it. It could be a software thing, I am by no means a software guy, so if someone wants to investigate, either tell me what to look for and how to look for it, or search through the OS and tell us what you find.

As for physical access to the card if we ever get this going, it looks like there will be no issue slotting the case and getting the SD card out. With the card reader in position and the card ejected, it sits above the top of the tab by about .25", that is plenty to handle it and do what you need to do. As for mounting it physically, it might come down to double sided tape, but the shield that normally holds the sim card reader fits the other side perfectly as well, but there are no holes tapped in the heat sink below. I have the tools and skill to drill and tap them, but I have no desire to take the thing far enough apart to do it safely. I think for the amount of ejects it will see, dbl sided tape is probably going to be *my* solution.

I meant to include the part numbers earlier, but forgot. I apologize. I bought the connectors at Mouser.com, but they are Molex parts. The Mouser Part # is:538-503776-1010, the Molex Part # is:503776-1010. This is the "plug" half only. The receptacle half, which I also bought, is not identical to the others there, it uses a different lead method which likely would not be solderable with traditional means.

My gut tells me that the unpopulated area seen in the pictures is important and that this is going nowhere without it. My question for you all, is, is there a Samsung phone with similar hardware to the tabs, but with a external SD card slot? My thoughts are this-- my experience has been that when a manufacturer designs something like this, they will quite commonly use the same circuit through various different devices and models. Until it has outlived it's usefulness, they typically don't spend good money to redesign what they have already done. If this phone exists, we need high res pictures. Otherwise, I plan to try to do some research on what the exactly the electrical requirements are of the SDHC card, and see if we can do any REing from there.

On a side note, does anyone have a guestimate on how many times I can remove the tabs back before it starts to quit latching back together correctly?

Sorry for the long winded post. Hopefully I hit on all the questions.

Thanks,

Jason