pad came off

[metalclay]

one of the little contact points came off, can i still use it?

[drsquirrel]

Not really.

You need to solder to the leg of the drive chip.

If you lifted a pad, its probably not a good idea you attempt the IC leg.

[metalclay]

how would i go about doing that then? i mean...i have no other choice really. ah, i see, i just follow the little bronze trail? will it really still work?

[drsquirrel]

Follow the track to the leg, thats where the pad would have went to. There are lots of people who have mucked up and needed to solder to these legs. It's not easy, specially if you are not skilled/have a very fine soldering bit.


I can almost gurantee you will bridge the legs, and seeing as you have lifted the pads, im not too hopeful you know how to use solder braid when you do that. Forgive me, but its mostly the same.

[metalclay]

Follow the track to the leg, thats where the pad would have went to. There are lots of people who have mucked up and needed to solder to these legs. It's not easy, specially if you are not skilled/have a very fine soldering bit.


I can almost gurantee you will bridge the legs, and seeing as you have lifted the pads, im not too hopeful you know how to use solder braid when you do that. Forgive me, but its mostly the same.
lol, yeah it is my first solder ever xD

luckily though i found this tut: http://modthatcube.pxn-os.com/content/solder/index.html

and it's helped me alot in soldering :D

anyway, i do know how to use a desoldering braid :) infact, that's how i messed up (a glob of solder came off, and while deslodering, i unrooted that pad because i already had it pretinned (right word?) since when i pretinned it, it was a bit coney). anyway, i have a 15-watt solder, and have a multimeter to check if i've bridged. and...man, it' gonna be hard, they're right next to each other!!!

hey, one question, since you seem to know alot about this:

when i check the points with the multimeter (a,b,c) for some reason, it goes up to a few random numbers like .852, 1.342, et cetera. but then seems to settle down and go back to .oL (which means no bridge right?). anyway, why does it do that? i can clearly see they're not bridged, yet, it still goes up and down.

i know my multimeter works, cause when i contact a point (a,b,c) with a power point (g,v) i get a settled number ~.758. so, again, can you tell me why it does that and if it does mean i have a bridged point, even though i can see, there is no bridge, can you tell me what i can do?

thanks for the awesome criticism :D

[drsquirrel]

I always check my multimeter against its own probes should do 0. I had to repair one recently as one of the wires was mucked up, luckily I checked and knew this before I started.


It's better to check visually (and even do the soldering) under some magnifying aid. Though, it will usually be obvious as you will easily see the solder between two legs... only mess around with the multimeter if it doesn't work.


What you are doing doesnt make that much sense.
For the multimeter set it to measure resistance, and check from leg on modchip to the corresponding leg on the drive chip leg. Though only really need to do this if it doesn't work.


1 no connect
0 connection
anything else - connection - usually, depends on the path in between it, if its got resistors etc then its not going to be 0.
Bridging the pins on the drive chip will return 0, normaly they will probably return 0.xxx as they are (possibly not sure on which) connected in some way on the inside of the IC.



15w is ok, the bits that come on them are still pretty big for what you will want to do now.

[Lok1]

Soldering to the leg of the IC is pretty difficult. Personally I think it is easier to scrape the trace and solder to that. It's still going to be difficult, but you can just scrape the trace (the trail coming from the pad you lifted to the IC leg) with an exacto knife until a bit of the copper is exposed, tin, and solder to that. Anyway, that's just another option.

[metalclay]

cool, thanks for that scraping option. but...i think i got it :D took a few hours but...i think i got it o.0. i checked with my multimeter, and...i got a oL (meaning no bridge).

one more question though...how do you solder the "z" cable? the one that connects to motherboard?. cause there's numbers 1 2 3, each with their own little pad that connects to two silver pads at the top. do i connect "2" or do i connect both silver pads at the top?

[drsquirrel]

You haven't said which chip you are using.

I assume Cyclowiz or WiiD, never really looked at their point names...

[metalclay]

cyclowiz :D www.cyclopswiz.com/install11.pdf

[drsquirrel]

Not required, dunno why anyone would want it really.

Just solder it where it shows, whats the problem?

You mean the position on the switch? The arrow shows it :s

[metalclay]

the arrow just points to the vicinity of where one should solder. the tut doesn't say exactly where to solder though, there are like 5 points where that arrow is pointing (numbers 1 2 3, with two being covered by the arrow that reads "z", and the two silver points on the block of the reset switch). if i solder exactly where the arrow says, that would be point 2. so...is it point 2?

it's just that...i also have a problem with the switch xD. so...i just want to reduce the amount of problems i have. w/e, thanks for all your help ::) most patient person here next to numms :D

anyway, if it's not required, then i guess i'll skip it:o