Building your own Lite On probe - guide with pictures

Managed to get these desoldered off an old internal modem and walkman.
Just need to know what strength those resistors. The two at the top are exactly the same the on at the bottom next to the resistor has a green strip the others dont

 

http://wiki.xtronics.com/index.php/Resistor_Codes for the resistors. Google the number on the transisters and see if you can find a data sheet. It's too blurry in the pic.

 

hmm can anyone help, i am getting a message saying bad serial data. I have tried everything i could find in forums from different ways of getting the drive to half closed to changing sata ports. The transistor i used is this one http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2062610, after seeing the specs on the one linked in the tut i am guessing its to big. Can anyone confirm before i redo my probe? Any help is much appreciated

 

Thanks for the advice i went online and searched for codes.
I scrapped those resistors as they were incorrect. Desoldered some off an ancient top loader VCR we had in the garage.
10k = brown black orange gold
1k = brown black red gold
My transistors is a 2N so it should all work

 

hey great tut. i just recently jumped into drive flashing and have long been in the modding scene. i was just wondering you think it would be possible to just take apart the dsub to usb adapter and wire it directly to the conections inside, eliminating the need for the dsub and housing. i have seen homemade usb probes on ebay just wondering what your guys input on the sugestion. i already have a dsub to usb adapter cost about the same as the dsub and housing so just wondering if it maybe be a better option or if its even possible.

 

Yes, it is possible, you'd have to find on the adapter where the point for pins 2 (Rx point) and 5 (GRND) of the Dsub are, find the 5V source from the USB to power up the circuit and once you have that done, you can indeed basically created a TTL to USB adapter (well, technically speaking TTL-to-RS232-to-USB lol). I'm sure they wouldn't be awfully hard to find.

So you'd connect the Colletor leg on the NPN to the Rx point on the adapter and the Emmiter leg on the Ground one while powering the 1k Resistor with a 5V point on the board itself. Sound simple enough. A multimeter should help.

 

cool thanks for the quick response. ive been doin sum research tryin to find a tut on making a usb probe but cant find much. from what i have come across there is some type of phone data cable that u dont need any transistors or anything u just solder a spear on the end of the wire. but i cant find any detailed description only brief refernces to the device and ive found a few on ebay. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl...ategory=139969&_trkparms=algo=LVI&its=I&otn=1 here is alink to what im talkin about.

 

well i figured my problem, make sure you use the correct transistor and that it's not cooked

 

I hooked mine up and the hyper term test gets back nothing. Took a volt meter to test and look like my transistor is also cooked. Could of been damaged from heat during soldering

 

Ok im glad to say my transistor was at fault. Hooked it up and tested it in hyper terminal and got random text showing up
thanks

 

nice glad to hear it, transistors seem to cause most of the problems, im sure i cooked mine when i had to solder it 3 times. yup no pro here lol.

 

I think you're referring to something like this: http://www.hvwtech.com/products_view.asp?ProductID=409

I'm not sure it's usable with any of the key extracting software out there, but you can do something similar with your adapter right now, just a bit of work if you ask me. Most solutions I've ran into do go through an RS232 interface though so I the picture might just not be showing the complete thing...

 

hey i made an account just to say thanks heaps, had no idea wtf that diagram on xs meant until i had actually made it using your guide which turned out to be a great success.

keep up the good work
once again, thanks alot

 

Congrats.

 

ok so i still am not gettin this thing to work i went to radio shack and got all the parts that were on ur list put them together exactly how it said and then tried it in JF and i kept gettin the error bad serial data. well i am using a usb to serial adapter just a generic cord i bought off ebay so i thought maybe that was the issue. so i went and found my driver disc for it and updated to the latest pl-2303 driver and still every time i plug in the usb to serial it says usb device not recongized. so then in a desperation attempt i hooked it up directly to the com port header on my MB on pins 2 and 5 and still got bad serial data. does anyone know where i am goin wrong??? i tested it with a multi meter and got 5v n my power line and 3 on the probe line is that right??? or how should i go about testing to find my mistake other than using it in JF.
thanks a bunch in advance

 

SPAM removed

 

is it possible to wire this directly to a usb cable instead of a db9?

 

You mean bypassing the 232 converter?

 

yes, Instead of using the serial connector just replace it with the male end of a usb cable.