Hey Moe, these Pipes is fulla Wires!

[hiroe.livejournal.com]

One of today's tasks: Resurrecting some functional toshiba laptops out of a pile of units with various issues. As a test of my skill, i attempted to remove and transplant a surface-mount TSSOP-package MAX3243 serial port transceiver, using only a standard 40-watt Weller pencil iron.

Using a heat-gun to pull it off the dead donor motherboard was pretty much the easy part. Resoldering it to the board under repair was a much more delicate operation; as the pins are only 1/100" wide, spaced 1/100" apart, 14 per side.



Result: laptop now has a functional serial port; no more 'Unrecognized Packet Error' messages.

Today has been one of those days where i enjoy what i do.

Comments

[taleya.livejournal.com]

Nice job!

There's nothing quite like the satisfaction of pulling off something extremely sensitive and fussy, is there?

[hiroe.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

Yeah, it was rather thrilling to see it work, after the fact.

[kizayaen.livejournal.com]

All I got to say is, your soldering skills eclipse the fuck outta mine.

[jecook]

... And here I thought I was a bit maso for hand-building a VGA cable with a 180 turn at one end.

[lihan161051.livejournal.com]

You had me at hand soldering a TSSOP device. :) Your soldering iron is probably better than mine, even, and you're probably using solder with much better flux in it. (My preferred stuff -- Multicore 63/37 -- is pretty damn good and I find SOIC's kind of fine pitch for my hands and eyes, TSSOP is doable but it gives me headaches. LOL)

[doublefelix.livejournal.com]

Good job... I'd never be able to do that o.O

[eyeamahuman.livejournal.com]

Bravo! Will you resolder my DC-Jack? lol

[hiroe.livejournal.com]

well, i can. Would you like me to?

[jimbojones.livejournal.com]

Impressive. Fuck if I'd be willing to do it!

I am reminded of a defining moment from Zork I:

> open egg
You have neither the tools nor the expertise.
>

[kayfox.livejournal.com]

Hehe, yay for soldering tiny stuff (http://www.flickr.com/photos/kayfox/2307094376/)...

That was the first one, after a few it became pretty easy.

BTW: That MAX3243... Product Page (http://www.maxim-ic.com/quick_view2.cfm/qv_pk/1069/t/do), Datasheet (http://datasheets.maxim-ic.com/en/ds/MAX3221-MAX3243.pdf).

[hiroe.livejournal.com]

hey, cool. What do those boards do?

[kayfox.livejournal.com]

They are small ARM7TDMI development boards:

http://www.k9spud.com/bbmicro/

[vxo.livejournal.com]

Congratulations... that's pretty damn awesome.

Normally, I'd take the lazy way out and just replace the board when it came down to SMT devices. (I have, however, changed smt fuses on laptop boards before, and soldered dc in jacks.)

Now, I'd love to find a way to reflow BGA packages. I could potentially resurrect a nice old hp dv4000 that way; the intel southbridge on those is known for poppin' off. I had the same thing happen to an old iBook G4 as well, with the ATI Radeon chip.

Curse you, BGA. You fail. Gull-wing / J-lead packages for the win!