The New Hotness

Once again, the Memory Stick socket cable in my trusty DSC-F717 camera became erratic, leading to continuous C:13:01 “format error” crashes, so I tore it apart. Proceed as before, until the camera carcass disgorges the socket:

Gently pry the metal cover outward to clear the latches along the sides:

The cover remains held in place by two tabs inside the holes on either side of the Memory Stick contacts, one of which is already free in the previous photo:

The small spring on the left ejects the Memory Stick and will, if suitably provoked, launch itself across the bench. Be prepared!

Use a pointy instrument to ease those tabs away from their latches and pop the top:

I cleaned the contacts, not that they appeared particularly filthy, gently bent them upward by three micro-smidgens to apply a bit more pressure to the card’s contacts, and reassembled the socket in reverse order.

I put a strip of Kapton tape on the back of the cable termination paddle (shown here during the previous repair) to ensure a snug fit:

Unfortunately, I snapped off a locking tab on one of the ribbon cable connections to the main board:

The cable threads through the middle of the clamp, which then slides into the socket and applies pressure to the contacts through the cable: no clamp, no pressure, no good.

For lack of anything smarter, I tamped the clamp into the socket and applied a strip of Kapton tape to maintain everything in more-or-less the right position:

Definitely unpretty, but better than nothing. While I was in there, I reinforced the other connections with similar clamps.

Reassemble the camera in reverse order and it’s all good:

It probably won’t last another decade, but ya never know …