USB Memory Stick Error Anatomy

A typical USB memory stick has very few discrete components. As these memory drives go, there is always a small microcontroller chip acting as the brains of the device. Microcontrollers require a clock pulse, generated by the quartz crystal, as shown above. There is also the main NAND flash memory chip on the reverse side of the PCB seen in the following sections of this article.

The USB port provides 5 V DC power to the electronic circuitry. Microcontrollers and memory chips generally operate between 2.7 V to 3.6 V; therefore, a voltage regulator is used to convert the voltage from 5 V to 3.3 V. D1 is an LED in a surface-mount device style package. One sees this light flashing during data transfer.

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