How to make your own Motorola "Factory Cable"

[unholydoragon]

Not sure if this is the right place for it, but I've attached images of my factory cable. Indeed the side with 3 pins/wires contains the +5V Red wire and the other side has an unused Pin . Shorting these two at the connector with a wire is the easiest approach in my opinion.

The approach with the extra mini-USB or any approach that cuts into the micro usb cable bundle itself is in my opinion excessive. The connector plastic housing was surprisingly easy to take off, and the metal shield/housing underneath was also quite simple to unwrap.

 

[tuxlifan]

European source for DIY cable

[...]The main problem (as detailed in the writeup I linked to above) is that since pin 4 is normally unused in a Mini/Micro B connector, there is no wire connected to it (to tie to), and in the case of the Mini B that I surgically dissected, the actual pin for pin 4 was nipped off at the back of the connector as well.

TL;DR: European source for a fully wired USB cable:
tinyurl.com
/ebay-at-usb-fully-wired

After soft-bricking a Kindle Fire and not wanting to pay 12$ for shipping alone from US, wait weeks and potentially have to deal with customs I tried to go the self-made route.
As it turns out the pin 4 was indeed "hard to get to" on the cables I had available to cannibalize.
So next I bought some solder-ready plugs - only to discover after many hours of soldering, swearing at the "micro" size of things and testing with a multimeter to make sure I'd done it all right that the pins were too easily bent out of alignment when I tried to actually use my contraptions on the device
But then after some weeks of frustration (oh, the irony ) I found
THE SOLUTION:
The "link" on top (sorry, new user and all...) goes to ebay.at where you can purchase (and have delivered worldwide, but specifically at an acceptable cost within Europe) a micro USB B female to micro USB B male cable that has all 5 pins wired.
Without any soldering required you can then, AT YOUR OWN RISK, proceed to carefully cut through the isolation, unwrap the outer shielding foil to expose red, black and yellow wires (leaving alone the inner wrapping you will then see, which contains the data wires), remove a few mm of isolation from the red wire, cut the yellow wire and connect the yellow wire half leading to the male plug to the red wire.
Then TEST IT with a multimeter to make sure it matches the wiring displayed in the first post of this thread when connected to an additional, regular, USB A Male to USB Mircro B cable, et voilà: a new "Factory Cable" is born

HTH

PS: Without warranty:

 micro B                               micro B
 female                                male
 ____
     |================================|
   3-|GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG|---3
   2-|WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW|---2
     |================================|
     |                                |
   5-|BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB|---5
     |                                |
   1-|RRRRRRRRRRRRRrrxrrRRRRRRRRRRRRRR|---1
     |                y               |
   4-|YYYYYYYYYYY.     yYYYYYYYYYYYYYY|---4
 ____|

   R = Red wire       r => uninsulated
   Y = Yellow wire    y => uninsulated
   x = electrical connection
   . = cut off

 

[jparnell8839]

I think the easiest method would be to use a breakout board... < $5 on Amazon with Prime shipping. Jump pin 1 to pin 4, cut the USB A end off a standard Micro USB cable, and route it accordinging: 1 BO to 1 USB, 2 BO to 2 USB, 3 BO to 3 USB, 4 BO to 5 USB.

If you really wanted to get fancy, you could also buy these housing headers for quick release and some shielding against shorts and damage (just don't put it on reverse)