Peripheral card with hidden test pins

Abstract

A peripheral card includes a circuit board, various circuit elements on the circuit board, a set of user terminals, a set of test terminals, and an enclosure that covers a portion of the circuit board and the circuit elements. The enclosure does not cover the user terminals and test terminals. After the peripheral card is tested, the test terminals are covered with a conformal contact coating in order to prevent access to the test terminals.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS [0001] This Application is related to U.S. patent application Ser. No. ______, “Method For Efficiently Producing Removable Peripheral Cards,” filed Jun. 23, 2003, Hem P. Takiar, Atty. Docket SDK1P014 / 370, which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0002] 1. Field of the Invention [0003] The present invention is directed to technology for peripheral cards. [0004] 2. Description of the Related Art [0005] Memory cards are relatively small removable cards that provide data storage. In most cases, but not required in all cases, the memory card is integrated circuit based. These memory cards plug into or are received by ports or connectors on electronic devices, including computing devices, cameras, mobile telephones, PDAs and other devices. One example of a memory card uses non-volatile memory. Electrical Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory (EEPROM) and flash memory are among the most popular non-volati...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0060] The foregoing detailed description of the invention has been presented for purposes of illustration and description. It is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the invention to the precise form disclosed. Many modifications and variations are possible in light of the above teaching. The described embodiments were chosen in order to best explain the principles of the invention and its practical application to thereby enable others skilled in the art to best utilize the invention in various embodiments and with various modifications as are suited to the particular use contemplated. It is intended that the scope of the invention be defined by the claims appended hereto.

Problems solved by technology

First, the test pins that are cut off use real estate on the circuit board.

Second, if the memory card fails in the field, there are no test pins to test the device in order to determine why the memory card failed.

There will be a small air gap between the bottom lid and the bottom of the circuit board While this design works well, the top and bottom lids are relatively expensive to manufacture.

Additionally, the lids are relatively bulky which limits how small the memory cards can be manufactured.

Similar issues exist with other types of peripheral cards, such as peripheral cards that implement wireless communication devices, GPS devices, cellular devices, network interfaces, modems, disk storage systems, and other devices.

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