128mb upgrade worklog — Success!

[Bowlsnapper]

On 9/9/2023 at 11:10 PM, sweetdarkdestiny said:

If you know how, you can also super glue em.  

I would like to say It's basicly pretty hard to kill a ram chip when desoldering but I know that ppl have killed em by cooking them to dead (#IR soldering? LÖL). I personaly never killed one, not by removing them with hor air, soldering with the iron or even through esd by touching them and not beeing grounded. And killing a board by soldering a "dead" ram chip is highly unlikely. Even if you solder the chip the wrong way it would just kill the chip, not the board (proven by someone I bought some chips of). So if you kill your entire board by soldering 1 ram chip well, don't be mad at me but, I would say you doing something very wrong. 

And reflowing with hot air or IR is not bad but not good either. Point here is you apply a lot of heat just because of bad soldering in the first place. I have a video on my YT channel where I remove ram. Since you have the same HA station you could just copy and past and be sure the ram will still work. After removing the first chip don't let the board cool down, flip it remove the next and so on (And heat the board, not the chip).

Brigdes behint the pins is possible sure but also highly unlikely at least in my opinion.  Guess you will win a lottiery before you end up with bridged pads behind the legs not seeing it. 

And ofc you have had a chance to see it but (yeah start to hate me) you prefered to buy TV's before a scope. Was a good trade of? I would say this (and others here may too) 1: Get your tools 2: Learn 3: Rapair 4: Sell 5: Buy shit you like.

And belive it or not, seeing how others do it helps a lot. It's still different when you do it your self the first time but it helps to understand and see how it should be done. And rushing things (Yeah, seems you rushing things a lot and didn't pay to much attention on things (# Your TSOP Topic for example))  DO NOT HELP - AT ALL! (You're free to hate me even more yet). And ofc we all (maybe with the exception of @SS_Dave who I belive has alsready soldered in his moms belly before he was born ) has fucked up things one or two times. And some times you do it right and it still didn't work. You start over and then it works and you has not  done anything different. Thats live. 

Finaly gaining skills. Grab a dead board,desolder parts, solder em back, repeat. And it also dosnt matter how you solder as long as it works for you and didn't kill parts. You are (by your own words) still afraid of causing bridges when drag soldering. Fuck that, bridges are the least thing you should be afraid of cause they are the simplest thing to remove. And if even you don't like dragsoldering at all, it also does not matter if you solder pin by pin as long as it works. The only real difference is you need more time by doing so nothing else. More skill will come over time so you may should give your self some time to learn no matter how long it takes. I presume that you will lought hard at your self in a year compairing your work you did these days with the work you will do then.  A short anecdote. When I startet Dave said something like soldering the ram chip no. 4 (the one in front of the GPU) is a pain in the ass to do (Guess he ment that from a beginners point of view). Today I think it's just a walk in the park to solder that chip. Didn't take longer or is more complicatet as the others but that came over time (Important point!) like many other things. 

Thank you for assuring me that hot air will not kill the RAM chip. Using the same hot air gun you have, It usually takes about 90 to 120 seconds at 350C to get a ram chip off. I usually use a narrow tip and focus on the legs of the ram chip rather than the board or the center of the chip. That's more or less the right way to do it, isn't it? I will take your advice to keep the board warm when removing chips. I'll track down your video.

Yes, I bought lots of TVs.

It's reassuring to see you say that even if you do something right, it could still go wrong, even if you do it the same way again the next time. I will just try to keep practicing and having it become second nature. 

The only problem with practicing on dead boards is that I don't know if I've soldered something truly successfully or not. It helps to get the technique down, I'm sure, but for finding out if your projects will be a success, that requires a live board. Although, in the video you provided, there are SMD soldering practice kits! This is very fuckin cool! I'm definitely buying one of these so I don't have to kill hardware in order to do it. 

https://retrogamerepairshop.com/collections/solder-practice

I'm trying to find a qfp practice kit that actually functions instead of just being isolated pads with no purpose and no traces. I usually to the RAM pin-by-pin and first press down on the leg which drags solder up it, and then drag down the leg and down the pad a bit. It seems to do it very cleanly and I never have bridges. Although, maybe if I have enough flux and a magnifier, I can become comfortable with dragging. I seriously cannot WAIT to get a magnifier, more iron tips and an ACHI6500 reflower. That will be a LOT of fun to learn to use.

[sweetdarkdestiny]

27 minutes ago, Bowlsnapper said:

To much to display. 

I usualy Set my hot air to 380°C with 30%-35% airspeed for desoldering with a bent 9mm nozzle. I pre-heat the surrounding a bit before I focus on the chip legs/pads. I always start at the bottom then the two on the upperside and then the last one on th ebottom. And as I wrote before it helps to work quick (but not rushingit) to keep the board "hot". So just flip the board over and remove the two chips on the upper side of the board in a couple of seconds. The flip it back again and remove the last chip. 

Here's the video : 

 

And there is always a sweet spot between time and heat. Saw some videos on YT about removing xbox am which say something like "Do not go higher than XXX°C" and at the same time in the same video they focus the head right on the top of the chip instead of the legs/pads.  The lower the temp the longer it takes right? The higher you go up with temps the faster you remove the chip but you could also killing it by going to high and heating it up "wrong". The chip basicly can withstand some heat as long as you not try to cook it "Al dente" like noodles . 

And one importat point is, that the temp, time vary for the equiment you use (Writing this for other users which may read this). So 380°C on the here used Atten is maybe 420 on another hotair station or just 350 on another one. (Thats I guess one point no one realy tells you anything about used temps). Works for me - May not works for you. 

You are right, practicing on dead boards didn't show you if it works. How ever, you build up the skill needed. Once you acquired that skill on a dead board, which means you are happy how it looks, no bridges, no ripped pads etc.  you can do it on working hardware without any doubt in your head (If that makes seens). Point here is, get a feel for when you rip pads, go and do it on pourpose on dead hardware. How to remove solder bridges, go and cover a chip solder and remove it then. Cut a trace and repair it. For all that you don't need anything else as a dead board. You then also don't need any of those soldering test thingy things.  Loosing fear (not the respect) is key and to understand how things work. If you got that, things become easy. 

 

And since you bought the tips I have, you DO NT NEED any other. Everthing can be done with these 6 tips. 

And do not buy the ACHI6500.  Waste of money imo. If you want a IR Station aim for the Achi ir pro sc (Or scotle as it's called now). Yeah coast a penny more but at the end you would need to update the 6000/6500 with new heaters, mod thhe station blablabla which then costs you more.

 

[Bowlsnapper]

On 9/10/2023 at 11:38 PM, sweetdarkdestiny said:

I usualy Set my hot air to 380°C with 30%-35% airspeed for desoldering with a bent 9mm nozzle. I pre-heat the surrounding a bit before I focus on the chip legs/pads. I always start at the bottom then the two on the upperside and then the last one on th ebottom. And as I wrote before it helps to work quick (but not rushingit) to keep the board "hot". So just flip the board over and remove the two chips on the upper side of the board in a couple of seconds. The flip it back again and remove the last chip. 

Here's the video : 

 

And there is always a sweet spot between time and heat. Saw some videos on YT about removing xbox am which say something like "Do not go higher than XXX°C" and at the same time in the same video they focus the head right on the top of the chip instead of the legs/pads.  The lower the temp the longer it takes right? The higher you go up with temps the faster you remove the chip but you could also killing it by going to high and heating it up "wrong". The chip basicly can withstand some heat as long as you not try to cook it "Al dente" like noodles . 

And one importat point is, that the temp, time vary for the equiment you use (Writing this for other users which may read this). So 380°C on the here used Atten is maybe 420 on another hotair station or just 350 on another one. (Thats I guess one point no one realy tells you anything about used temps). Works for me - May not works for you. 

You are right, practicing on dead boards didn't show you if it works. How ever, you build up the skill needed. Once you acquired that skill on a dead board, which means you are happy how it looks, no bridges, no ripped pads etc.  you can do it on working hardware without any doubt in your head (If that makes seens). Point here is, get a feel for when you rip pads, go and do it on pourpose on dead hardware. How to remove solder bridges, go and cover a chip solder and remove it then. Cut a trace and repair it. For all that you don't need anything else as a dead board. You then also don't need any of those soldering test thingy things.  Loosing fear (not the respect) is key and to understand how things work. If you got that, things become easy. 

 

And since you bought the tips I have, you DO NT NEED any other. Everthing can be done with these 6 tips. 

And do not buy the ACHI6500.  Waste of money imo. If you want a IR Station aim for the Achi ir pro sc (Or scotle as it's called now). Yeah coast a penny more but at the end you would need to update the 6000/6500 with new heaters, mod thhe station blablabla which then costs you more.

 

... awesome post, friend. Thank you very much. I am going to try the pro sc, as per your recommendation.

Edit: I'm having trouble finding a unit that isn't in China. Lol. Is it even safe to order a hot air reflow unit from AliExpress?

I tend to stick around 35 percent air as well. You're about 30 degrees higher than I am though, but it takes me about the same amount of time to detach the chips. Based on your video, I don't think any of the chips I detached should have a problem with heat death.

[sweetdarkdestiny]

48 minutes ago, Bowlsnapper said:

Edit: I'm having trouble finding a unit that isn't in China. Lol. Is it even safe to order a hot air reflow unit from AliExpress?

Was it save to your soldering and hot air station there? Just watch out for the 110v version. 

Here's one on shebay : https://www.ebay.com/itm/225640197165

Edited September 12, 2023 by sweetdarkdestiny

[Bowlsnapper]

34 minutes ago, sweetdarkdestiny said:

Was it save to your soldering and hot air station there? Just watch out for the 110v version. 

Here's one on shebay : https://www.ebay.com/itm/225640197165

Fair point. I guess I could do it... Thank you for reminding me of the 110 version.

Man, why is all this stuff so hard to buy? Lol. Not hard necessarily, but indirect. Always in China, always with 3 reviews, takes a month to ship it. Lol.