Realtek RTS5301

[Mr. Man-wai Chang]

I failed to find any specification for a chip labelled as "Realtek
RTS5301", and was made in Taiwan. It's a chip on the circuit board of a
Akasa USB 3.0 Internal Card Reader.

Could someone help? :)

[Paul]

On 2/2/2022 1:11 AM, Mr. Man-wai Chang wrote:
> I failed to find any specification for a chip labelled as "Realtek RTS5301", and was made in Taiwan. It's a chip on the circuit board of a Akasa USB 3.0 Internal Card Reader.
>
> Could someone help? :)

The chip supports up to 2TB flash storage devices.
There are no rates listed on the interfaces, like
95MB/sec or UHS-I or UHS-II or whatever.

https://www.siig.com/usb-3-0-multi-card-reader.html

This is about as close as I could get by traversal
on the actual site, and the 5301 is not there.
Neither is the 5321.

https://www.realtek.com/zh-tw/products/computer-peripheral-ics/category/card-reader-controllers

It's not listed as such here.
A certain number of the card readers, have no known IC number.

http://www.linux-usb.org/usb.ids

In the integrated circuit business, this is
called a "mystery meat".

If you can follow the chit-chat (conversational styling) here,
the 5301 appears to be replaced by RTS5321. The 5321 supports
UHS-II. leaving us to guess whether 5301 is just UHS-I.

https://goughlui.com/2017/06/01/quick-review-teardown-transcend-rdf9k-uhs-ii-usb-3-13-0-card-reader/

A device with the 5301 inside is reviewed in a separate article.

I think you're going to enjoy this.

The way to make it work properly, is to remove the flash firmware chip,
forcing it to use the mask ROM inside the chip!

https://goughlui.com/2014/02/17/review-teardown-kogan-usb-3-0-universal-memory-card-reader/

Thank God for hobbyists!

Paul

[Mr. Man-wai Chang]

On 3/2/2022 1:28, Paul wrote:
>
> https://goughlui.com/2017/06/01/quick-review-teardown-transcend-rdf9k-uhs-ii-usb-3-13-0-card-reader/
>
> A device with the 5301 inside is reviewed in a separate article.
>
> I think you're going to enjoy this.
>
> The way to make it work properly, is to remove the flash firmware chip,
> forcing it to use the mask ROM inside the chip!
>
> https://goughlui.com/2014/02/17/review-teardown-kogan-usb-3-0-universal-memory-card-reader/

Thanks! I noticed something werid about this internal card reader
recently. So I opened up the internal card reader to see what's inside.
I think this chip incorrectly responded when the motherboard BIOS was
booting Win 10. I hope it's not spy firmware. :)

Thank you very much!

[Mr. Man-wai Chang]

On 3/2/2022 1:28, Paul wrote:

> The way to make it work properly, is to remove the flash firmware chip,
> forcing it to use the mask ROM inside the chip!

> ....
> Thank God for hobbyists!

Finished reading the article.

Interesitng that the new firmware in the added EPROM actually restricted
the controller's full functionalities... um.... Let me have a look at my
reader's circuit board again. Post back later.... :)

[Mr. Man-wai Chang]

On 3/2/2022 1:28, Paul wrote:

> A device with the 5301 inside is reviewed in a separate article.
>
> I think you're going to enjoy this.
>
> The way to make it work properly, is to remove the flash firmware chip,
> forcing it to use the mask ROM inside the chip!

Using the Sandisk firmware upgrade utitliy, the firmware of my Akasa
AK-ICR-14 Internal Card Reader was reported as verison 118. The one in
Sandisk is version 138. I don't think I would flash it since the Sandisk
card reader had fewer ports.

There is also a very small 8-pin surface-mounted chip that looked like a
EPROM for firmware.

I also found that the Akasa card reader had to use its bundled 2-in-1
cable to turn it on. Using only one USB 3.0 cable could not turn it on.
I suspect it's a USB Y-cable in disguise, with a USB 3.0 port for other
purposes.

Thank you again!