burnt 405nm ebay laser or driver

[hawkeye1103]

Hello,

I have a laser bought off of eBay for $10, it has been marketed at 405nm and 100mW I know it might not be true, it does light up matches pretty easily.

Lets get down to the subject at hand, I might have burnt the laser or the driver and I want to know which one is dead. It does light up but it's very dim the beam can be seen at a couple of inches away not distinguishable farther than that. What i did to burn it you might ask... I put in the 16340 battery the wrong way in (inverted the polarities). I did smell some magic smoke... it seemed to come from the driver.

Thanks for your help in advance and have a great day.

 

[hawkeye1103]

I'll try that and while i'm there i'll get a new driver also... see if that fixes the problem.