Soldering mishaps...

[Gautam]

Basically the premise is, I've been running my P5W64 ovp modded for a bit, but a couple of days ago the mod accidentally came undone. This is the mod in question, courtesy of AndreYang at XS:

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~gautamb/p5w64mod.JPG

Tiny as you can see. The mod has a slightly long history. It was previously damaged once in transportation and a friend replaced that entire SMD resistor.

So...one of the leads had broken off now and I had to put the sucker back in place.

Got it on in only a second. Perfect, or so you'd think. Took a closer look, turned out I accidentally ever so slightly got some solder bridging two resistors together. Okay, no big deal, just pull the desoldering braid out and I should be set right?

Ended up removing the lead completely which was okay since it was slightly messy anyways. Unfortunately I removed the lead on the other side of the SMD resistor. d'oh, well, still not the end of the world.

Then I took a close look at the board and something didn't look right.

Then I noticed that the SMD resistor that you see circled in that pic above was dislodged from the board.

Things were becoming a little more problematic. I grabbed it with some tweezers and tried to get its resistance. 0.

Uh-oh. Looks like all that trauma ended up burning the thing out. Not only that, even if it weren't, it's the size of a grain of sand, and I don't trust myself with something so ridiculously tiny.

So...I was a little nervous now. My first thought was that the board was history and I mentally prepared myself to overnight another one from the egg.

Nevertheless, I took a deep breath.

Yes, that little resistor was blown, but the two solder pads that used to hold it were totally intact. As long as I could put the proper resistance between those two points, I'd be set.

The little SMD is 681 ohm. The vr on there that I had was 4.98k. So the final resistance I needed was 599 ohm.

Took the 5k trimmer that was hooked up to the leads, and dialed it in.

Then I took the leads and soldered them directly to the exposed solder pads.

Hooked the board up, fired it up, and voila, success. Sucker posted right up.

This is my fix for now, I'll tidy it up tomorrow but for now I was just excited that I actually resurrected this very pricey and rare board, still using my 10 buck ratshack iron. Ironically I was planning to get a much better soldering station next week.

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~gautamb/ipwn.jpg

Btw, for those of you wondering I'm still lazy to fix my SATA controller card...I'll have to get to that soon.

[Vento1]

Good job thats a very small area to solder too. While you had the soldering iron out you should have fixed your sata card. :D

[thideras]

Jeez, having fun with solder much? lol :beer:

Atleast you were able to fix the board.

[Gautam]

Yep, I'm pretty happy. I'd have normally taken the board for dead.

I think I'll wait for a new iron to fix the card, not that it'd be necessary but more just for the hell of it.

I think I made the title too gloomy...:-/...I wanted to get some suspense built up, lol.

[Roofles]

I just had a hell of a time with modding my X-fi.

I do my modding at work for the moment because we have really nice Weller irons and all the supplies you could ever need.

So, Monday. I take my card into work with the intention of swapping the power supply cap and replacing the stock crappy op amp. Easy right? I'm an EE. I can solder well. etc etc.

So I cut the cap out of the board. Trim the leads as close to the board as possible and try to desolder the thing. Nope. F that the board says. The thing is a freaking heatsink. I change solder iron tips about 2 times and finally get the leads out with lots of patience and solder wick. Okay, time to move on to the op amp.

So I decide that cutting the op amp out is more effective so I grab my nearest cutters and cut that s0b off. Simple. Done. I then solder in the replacement LM4562 op amp. SOIC stuff is pretty easy. Okay, everything in place. Done. This was supposed to be done over my lunch break, but it took me probably about 1.5 -> 2 hours. Oh well.

So I take the card home and toss it in. and... only one channel works. F#@$. Crap... I say. I figured s0b I have a bad op amp. fine, I'll take it back to work and replace it with one of the other ones.

Tuesday. I take the card into work to replace the op amp. I cut it out again, except... This time I tore a trace out of the board. F@#$. Crap again... I say. Well I tried for a while to apply solder to the trace itself but it wouldn't stick. Finally I got a good lump to stick and put another LM4562 on and just loaded that pin up with solder in the hopes it would fill in and make a connection.

I take it home. One channel. F@#$. Crap thrice... I say. I have one op amp left and Wednesday to figure it out.

Wednesday. I cut out and desolder the rest of the op amp parts. I figure that I could trace the via back to where it makes a connection and hope to god that I can solder the op amp pin to something. I can. W3wt... I say. I then realize that in my hurried manner than I popped a surface mount resistor off that was right in front of the op amp. F@#$. Crap #4... Where the hell am I going to find another one! Well. I'll tackle that problem later. First lets get the op amp back on and do me some fandangling with the lead. I solder the op amp in and trace the lead back to a surface mount resistor. Fine, its a short trace. I can do this. I have these little strands of wire from who knows where laying around so I try to soldier those to the resistor. I MELTED THE F@#$NG RESISTOR. Crap... I say. Now I'm down 2 surface mount resistors that are SO SMALL THEY DON"T HAVE NUMBERS. Yeah. F@#$.

Okay, but I remember that if you use surround you could mod the other op amps so that you get better sound. Go go gadget brain! Idea. Signal Light bulb! I measured the resistance of the little surface mount parts in the same physical relation to all the op amp channels. TA DA! They are the same! Sweet!

But now I have to unsolder 2 surface mount resistors that are so freaking small they could be mistaken for dust. In fact I could imagine dust would eat it.

Half an hour later. Ta da! I've removed the two resistors!

Probably another 15 minutes and I've soldered them back down to the main channel op amp!

Now I just have to solder the op amp lead to where the resistor I just replaced was. I used little pieces of some stranded wire that was laying around. Twisted them up and cut off the end. Soldered end 1 to the resistor. and then made sure I didn't short it to ground and soldered the other end to the op amp pin. Sweet! Done... I say.

But wait, I have to transport this dinky mod home. So I dumped hot melt glue all over the op amp and the now signal wire. Done.

I take it home. Moment of truth... I haven't put my headphones on yet. My mom and sisters are yelling at me to go to dinner. And I have to pee.

And steam has to start up... I'm waiting...

Load up iTunes. Play some music... TWO F@#$ING CHANNELS!!! YEAH BABY.

Needless to say. I was proud of myself.

[Gautam]

lol...awesome.

Where'd you get the replacement smd resistors from, didn't see you mention it?

I'm more or less an EE, and I've been soldering since I've been in elementary school, but yet I'd never dream of saying that I'm good at soldering :( Quite to the contrary, we never learned anything about doing so in school, just textbook knowledge, and even in lab the components we used were always so big that there's no way in hell they could've prepared me for the dust-sized SMD's you find on computer stuff. :S

[Roofles]

I unsoldered them from an adjacent channel from the X-fi Card itself.

In general I get good soldering skills from building models and miniature painting more than actual practice.

We really only had an intro class in which we soldered stuff. The EE stuff helps more with not worrying about touching stuff you have no idea what it does. And made me realize that I could use the extra components in a pinch!

I told my mom this story and she laughed and told me I bastardized the card!

[Gautam]

Oh gotcha.

Yeah I know what you mean about the not worrying part. The only thing that's changed since when I started ocing and voltmodding back in high school and now is that I understand perfectly the theory behind what I'm doing, which I guess makes me panic a little less. (If were in high school I would've tossed this board in the dumpster under these circumstances, then I'd probably have proceeded to cry because I'd never have had the money to get another one)

The stereotype of all EE's being able to solder well makes me feel like a dunce though. :-/ I thought we were supposed to be nerds, since when did fine motor skills come into the package?? :p

[Roofles]

:-/ I thought we were supposed to be nerds, since when did fine motor skills come into the package?? :p


Hah! Yeah I've been building stuff since I was way too young. And more than legos and crap. My friends who are ME's conclude I am the exception to the rule when it comes to mechanical aptitude.

There should be a "look what I broke and how I saved it sticky" for humor.

[Gautam]

My friends who are ME's conclude I am the exception to the rule when it comes to mechanical aptitude.

Heh, I'd say so. I'd say most engineers such as myself just get forced to learn to get good at this stuff eventually. :p

Yeah I was just gonna say I'd actually love to see more stories like this in this thread, or in another one if that's what people prefer.

You certainly went through a lot more hell than me, tbh my first thought when I dislodged that SMD was that I smoked at least a couple others and maybe burnt a trace too....in the grand scheme of things my damage could have been much worse and was very tame. Took only a minute to fix. Still made me feel good, let me dodge plan b) (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131047). :eek: