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

[0013] Some embodiments of the present invention will include manufacturing the peripheral cards a batch at a time, followed by singulation of the batch into individualized memory cards. The present invention allows for the covering of the test pins before or after singulation. For example, one implementation includes the steps of adding circuit elements to a plurality of circuit boards of a strip (each of the plurality of circuit boards includes a set of test terminals), separating the connected circuit boards, testing the circuit elements of the circuit boards using the test terminals, and applying a conformal contact coating on a first surface of each of the circuit boards. The conformal contact coating covers the test terminals and prevents access to the test terminals such that a particular circuit board has its test terminals covered after that particular circuit board has been tested.

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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