This post has a little bit of everything. Hardware diagnostics, some suspiciously similar datasheets from two separate Taiwan chip manufacturers, and firmware reverse engineering. Read on if that sounds like fun!
Lately, I’ve been enjoying watching random electronics repair channels on YouTube. There’s something oddly satisfying about watching someone take a broken device from totally nonfunctional to perfectly working, all by replacing a $0.05 capacitor that has failed shorted or maybe a blown $0.75 IC. Two of my favorite channels about this topic are Buy it Fix it and StezStix Fix?.
The videos inspired me. I thought, “I should totally try this!” So I went on eBay and looked for broken devices. I have a pretty decent understanding of how video encoders and decoders work, so I thought it would be a fun project to try to fix an HDMI capture card. I found a broken Elgato Game Capture HD60 S USB 3.0 device. The listing said that nothing happened when you plugged it in.
When it arrived, I was able to verify exactly what the listing said. Nothing showed up on my computer when I plugged it in. I cracked it open and had a look at what was happening internally when it powered up. I started by poking around at voltages on the board with it plugged in, and it was pretty obvious that something was dragging the power rails down. Little did I know at that point what I was getting myself into.
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