Here’s a quick and easy way to straighten out pins you’ve bent:
Just take a plastic card and use it to straighten pins. Just gently wedge the card in every row, both directions, to straighten slightly misaligned pins. The thicker the card, the more you may have to play around with it (going back and forth between rows to get a row straight).
(Newer California drivers licenses and I assume other states also, won’t work because they’re too thin, but thicker ones like credit cards and gas cards, or school ID in this case are the perfect thickness for this).
Simple, and as you can see, it works!
Half the pins on this chip were bent, some were flat, but I straightened them as best I could with tweezers, then used the card to put them at perfect right angles.
You can span across the bare area in the center with most processors, too, but not with XP’s (they have components in the middle). For those, you’ll have to rock the card a bit, but it still works.
(Ed. note: Whenever you find yourself in this position, the key concept is “GENTLE” and the card approach makes you to that. These pins look sturdier than they really are, and can come off pretty easily. If one does, you’ve either given yourself a very delicate soldering job or a new keychain.
As more and more pins get put in smaller and smaller places, the odds on bent pins and the need to fix them exactly will increase. So remember this one.–Ed)
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