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Bad At Soldering. Is This Mb Ruined?


roflandstuff
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There's another way to repair the board, by tracing the vias (explained below *). Soldering such thick wires is challenging. It takes a lot of heat to get them holding on there. The strength of that wire makes it prone to lifting the thin traces.

If you have any old, broken electronics, take them apart and look for thinner wires. Enameled magnet wire would work great here, because it's so thin and flexible. You can buy enameled wire, I had some 26 AWG that worked ok. I think as thin as 32 AWG has been used or recommended.

 

The heat of the iron is the other factor that makes it tricky, and it might even have a large tip. You can regulate it manually, turn it on and off at the wall to keep it slightly hotter than the temperature needed to melt your solder. It should hold temperature long enough to work with, you should have at least 5 seconds before needing to turn it on again.

 

* Alternate repair option: Follow the vias

 

(holes in the PCB that link to the other side of the board).
 

You could solder wires on the top of the board, where you can get to larger PCB pads. It's possible to solder to the tiny resistors, but that's very risky. They easily lift off and move around. The lowest via circled in the second image is close to one. I'd try to solder a thin wire to the via. You could even get a thin wire to poke through the via, and that might be easier to solder to. The shorter the excess wire, the better. That also applies to wire insulation length.

 

I found a large photo of a v1.6 board, and tried my best to follow the vias. The one closest to the LPC was the hardest. You can't see the via in the photo. Not sure if it's a via or just a pad.

I've drawn the red circles accurately, and anything outside of them is not part of the trace your trying to repair.

 

The solder on that LPC connector should be more cone shaped to give the best mechanical strength (so it lasts a long time, and you can plug/unplug a modchip heaps of times without it breaking).

The solder naturally clings to the metal, and forms a good shape when there's not too much of it, and the surfaces are clean.

Isopropyl alcohol is perfect for prepping the board to solder. Quality flux also helps.

xbox_mobo1.png

 

 

xbox_mobo3.png

Edited by van0014
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  • 2 months later...
On 1/12/2020 at 9:18 AM, roflandstuff said:

Title says it all, I suck at soldering. the lead pulled off when i was putting on a wire. Am I pretty much SOL with this board? I have another but I'm rather discouraged from doing anything to it now.

 

 

WIN_20200112_08_57_09_Pro.jpg

With proper equipment and preparation of the surfaces soldering is actually fairly easy. From what I can see your iron is either too hot or you held it on the board for too long and there is way too much solder on all of those points except one. My guess is the solder wasn't flowing into the joint so you kept adding more which would indicate either the board surface/iron tip weren't clean or you didn't use flux. All of those issues are easily fixable and that trace is definitely repairable as well, you just need to practice on a board from a junked piece of electronics until you have the process down before attempting it.

You can only be as good as the tools you are using to get the job done so an iron with temperature adjustment is highly recommended.

Less is more. Use the minimum amount of solder necessary, the minimum temperature to get the solder to melt, and only have the iron contacting the surfaces you are soldering for a few seconds at a time.

I've been where you are and have killed my fair share of boards as well. I thought learning to solder properly was hopeless as no matter what I did I would end up with solder joints that look just like the picture. My problem was the 15w soldering iron from Radio Shack that I started with. I picked up a 70w Weller 1010 and it literally took me 30 minutes on a dead pc motherboard before I did my first pin header for a modchip successfully on the first try. That iron is expensive at $105 on Amazon but considering I was killing expensive hardware with the cheap iron it was well worth the cost. Hope this helps..... 

 

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On 1/28/2020 at 8:43 PM, martian225 said:

I've done worse.

We all have at some point. It's all part of the learning process. It just stings a bit when it's a device you want to keep and use and not a throwaway. After I trashed the motherboard during my first solder attempt ever, I picked up a junk computer, removed the motherboard and sat there for a couple hours bridging points, attaching wires, desoldering components, and soldering pinheaders. That is my recommendation now for everyone I speak to who is new at soldering.

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On 4/3/2020 at 6:01 AM, SS_Dave said:

The key thing that you mentioned is PRACTICE.

And a poor trades person blames their tools.

 

Cheers

SS Dave


Soft modding is like masturbating, It get's the job done but it's nothing like the real thing.

I agree with you about blaming the tools just being an excuse, however having quality tools makes the job easier in every situation I can think of, not just soldering. My first iron was a 15w Radio Shack pencil. I couldn't solder anything properly with that iron. I am in no way saying it's impossible with that iron though. Had I put in the time I absolutely could have made it work for me. As I just mentioned in the post above this one after a couple hours I was able to successfully solder with the iron. 

I did some reading though because from all of the tutorials out there soldering is made to look quite easy for most jobs. Every article kept mentioning temperature control so I started looking and landed on the Weller 1010. No bullshit, after it came and I tried on that junk motherboard, I instantly saw a difference. After a little bit of practice with the new iron I knocked out my first pinheader on the first try in only a few minutes. You can give an expert tradesman the worst tools in existence and they will absolutely get the job done, but having decent tools absolutely flattens the learning curve and makes the learning process far easier and more forgiving for a beginner. That was all I was getting at.

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