Teardown, Optimization: Comsol 8Gb USB Flash Stick (2015)

A while back, I received a Comsol 8Gb USB Flash Stick for a test. As it turns out, I’ve managed to grab another, so I felt less bad about breaking one apart to work out what’s inside – and as it turns out, it provided me a world of entertainment for the weekend. It was more than I expected, and the optimization process is something engineers (like myself) really get excited about. Teardown and Experiments I’m sad to say that the teardown of this product is a relatively destructive process. The main PCB itself is held inside a thin aluminium “tube” by two glued-in translucent plastic end-pieces. Cutting the pieces and twisting them out with pliers was the only method to free the internal PCB, which revealed some interesting results. The PCB is marked C20V-2.0-AU6989-L48-2L-TF-1.5 and is dated 26th June 2014, making this a relatively recent design. A provision is made for a front LED, which is unused, instead in preference of a rear LED. A provision is made for a crystal oscillator, b ... Read full article.