How to quickly fix an SD card slot in a CPAP machine.

There's been a lot of interest in SD Flash cards that wirelessly beam your data from your CPAP machine to your computer's sleep software automatically, all without having to remove the SD card each time. This reduces wear and tear on your vulnerable slot. The SD Flash card is especially handy for those who check their sleep software every day. But what if you waited too long and your SD slot is now broken (a common problem) and it will no longer accept the card? The video below is really good and shows you how to fix the slot in fifteen minutes or less. Basically, in the SD slot assembly there's a sliding track with a spring off to one side... this easily gets broken or misaligned. It's a pretty easy fix.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SlwmEc0ECI

If you need instructions on how to open up the various cases of the most common CPAP machines, please search for the term 'teardown' or 'tear down' or 'tear-down' using the CPAPtalk search function in the upper left hand corner.

Thanks! Helpful information to squirrel away in case of emergency.

I understand the advantages of the sd flash or Wifi card. Has any one had any problems with sd slot mechanism yet with the A10 or any other cpap.

I took my SD card out loosely and closed the side door on the A10 Resmed and it pushes the card far enough in to record again (I physically tested), it helps on that side but for my laptop if damaged I would have to use a piece of tape to keep it injected to read.(I would not take the machine apart at all, to many things that could go wrong with my luck.)

Cannuck 1 wrote:I took my SD card out loosely and closed the side door on the A10 Resmed and it pushes the card far enough in to record again (I physically tested), it helps on that side but for my laptop if damaged I would have to use a piece of tape to keep it injected to read.(I would not take the machine apart at all, to many things that could go wrong with my luck.)

I understand that the disassembly of a CPAP is not a option some people want to take on - however for those who like to tinker it's fairly easy on both ResMeds and PRs... both are well documented on this forum with lots of annotated pictures and so forth. (see my original post above).

In a pinch blue tape does work for keeping the SD card firmly inserted in the slot, ie. if the spring is damaged or broken. It's not a great long term solution tho. BTW: My new ASUS i5 desktop computer has an SD card player in the front panel... interestingly enough it was designed with NO SPRING. The SD card just slides in and to pull it out you simply grab the back edge of the card and ease it out (without pushing it in). I like that design and think it's an improvement because in the past I have had SD card slots fail, usually from overuse I suspect. When you inspect them they do look awfully frail!

That video is frightening. He's being brutal to those cards. He's using no antistatic protection. He's bending up the electrical shield.

Also, the "fix" he's doing is only fixing the case where the card doesn't stay in the slot. Once you do his "fix," the card goes into the slot, but no longer comes out automatically. Depending on the card slot, you might not be able to get the card back out.

archangle wrote:That video is frightening. He's being brutal to those cards. He's using no antistatic protection. He's bending up the electrical shield.

Also, the "fix" he's doing is only fixing the case where the card doesn't stay in the slot. Once you do his "fix," the card goes into the slot, but no longer comes out automatically. Depending on the card slot, you might not be able to get the card back out.

To me he looks like somebody who does this for a living and isn't afraid to get the job done, but to each their own. Besides it's in real time for a video and there's only so much time you take. First-timers may want to slow down a bit. Anti-static mats are fine but in the real world it is almost impossible to keep the PCB on the mat at all times. Also I think I explained up above that the spring affair is basically unnecessary since there are leaf springs on each of the connectors to insure electrical contact. Therefore just sliding the card into the slot is good enough (like in my new ASUS desktop, no spring slider/ejector in there). But hey, archangle, if the prospect of potentially fixing your machine's SD slot doesn't appeal to you, then after a breakdown, send it Accurate BioMed and have them do it for a couple hundred dollars and two week turnaround.

Sir NoddinOff wrote:Antistatic mats are fine but in real practice it is almost impossible to keep the PCB on the mat at all times. Also I think I explained up above that the spring affair is basically unnecessary since there are leaf springs on each of the connectors to insure electrical contact. Therefore just sliding the card into the slot is good enough (like in my new ASUS desktop, no spring slider in there). But hey, archangle, if the prospect of potentially fixing your machine's SD slot doesn't appeal to you, then after a breakdown, send it Accurate BioMed and have them do it for a couple hundred dollars and two week turnaround.

There's no need to keep a card on the antistatic mat all the time. You wear a wrist strap connected to the mat. Once you've set the card on the mat, you can pick up the card and play with it all day long as long as you don't touch anything that hasn't been grounded to the card. Any manual tools will also be OK as long as you set them on the mat first.

Without the spring, it's a lot harder to get the card out of many devices. My S9 and PRS1 machines would probably be usable this way with some difficulty, but you might need tweezers. Some thing like my PC don't have springs and don't need them because the card sticks out enough. That would be a bad idea for many devices where it would stick out enough to get broken off.

The biggest problem I have with this video is the suggestion that this is a generic fix for SD cards. Most SD card problems I've seen or heard of are problems of not getting contacts, not the "won't stay in" problem this video is about. I'm not sure I've heard of anyone having that problem with their CPAP machine.