A long time ago I bought a rather expensive Hauppauge HD PVR2 for recording HDMI video. From the beginning I had problems with it. Assistance from the Help desk was grudging at best but eventually it was decided that a bad USB cable must be at fault. I changed the cable and things seemed to improve for awhile, but it never really worked right.
Over time I have played with it on occasion but never actually used it for much, partly because it was such a pain to use. Today I decided to give it another try. After some fiddling it looked like it was about to actually let me record something when suddenly everything stopped. Upon closer inspection, I discovered that the USB connector had come loose from the circuit board and fallen inside!
So I opened everything up and sure enough, there it was. I now realise that my problems have been due to this connector from the beginning, and not any particular cable. I don’t understand why Hauppauge chose this crappy little micro-connector when there is plenty of room in the unit for the regular size one. Maybe it is intended to fail after a time.
I took a very close look but it is like this connector was specifically designed not to be fixable. The contacts are extremely miniscule and close together and there is nothing on the other side of the board that might be tapped into. Repairing this is almost a physical impossibility.
I am wondering if there is an outside chance that anyone has experience playing around with these. There are only four contacts for USB 2 and there ought to be some other place on the circuit board where I might have a better chance of being able to make connections, but there is nothing that can be traced. The circuits are all sandwiched between the two sides of the board. Does anyone have any bright ideas?