Raspberry Pi SD slot replacement

NEW_SLOTMaybe you have already experienced the “red LED only” issue with your Raspberry Pi. If you are sure that everything is ok (power supply, SD card, OS files) maybe you have a SD card slot issue: the plastic sides of the original holder could be damaged and the memory card doesn’t have a good contact and your board can’t boot. In such case the best thing to do is to replace the SD slot. Find out an exact part replacement it was really hard however why use again a thin, plastic holder when a better metallic part could permanently fix the SD contact issue? Finally we decided to use this part, made by Wurth Elektronik and available from Farnell: http://uk.farnell.com/wurth-elektronik/693063020911/memory-socket-sd-card-9way/dp/2081361?Ntt=693063020911

As you can see a little damage on the original SD plastic slot is enough to cause a connection problem that will prevent system boot up:

SD_SLOT_OLD_DETAILS

SD_DETAILThe last two pins on the right hand side are for card detecting and they must be connected together because the Wurth slot doesn’t have the same pin out of the original connector: they are on the left hand side where are located the contacts for the write protect detection, function not used by Raspberry Pi boards as reported in the official schematic http://www.raspberrypi.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Raspberry-Pi-R2.0-Schematics-Issue2.2_027.pdf

8 thoughts on “Raspberry Pi SD slot replacement

  1. I just replaced the original slot with the Wurth part. I thought I would provide a little clarification on the card-detect and write-protect pins.

    Looking from the top on the original part, the two left-most pins (with vertical fins) are the write-detect pins. The right-most pins are the card-detect pins on the original part. The Raspberry Pi uses card-detect, but not write-protect.

    On the Wurth replacement part, write-protect is the left-most pin and card-detct is the one right next to it. This prevents replicating the original behavior without a fly wire. These two left-most pins don’t really need to be connected. I connected them together and shorted them to the nearby ground tab.

    The Raspberry Pi expects the SD_CARD_DET signal, connected to one of the right-most pads, to be connected to GND when the card is inserted. So, I shorted the 2 right-most pads (not connected to a card slot pin) and shorted them to the nearby ground tab on the card slot.

  2. Hi, its a little unclear but with the new SD card holder soldered in are the 2 write protect pins soldered together like the 2 card detect pins?

    Edward

    • Hi Edward,

      if you look at the schematic, you can see that on Raspberry Pi the two write protect pins are not connected therefore it is not important if they are soldered together or not.

  3. Thank you mate.
    I’m getting the same problem, but in my case the Raspberry don’t have any broken or even damaged plastic.
    My Raspberry was working with a Raspbian for a months but suddenly doesn’t boot showing the “red LED”. Only when I push my SD card towards the springs the system can boot. I will try to use some kind of plastic sheet making presion to the SD card to solve it.

  4. Thanks – ran into this issue with a recent batch of RPIs; the SD slot is too flimsy and the connector pins not so springy.

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