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Rant: SMD soldering

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I'd forgotten just how much I hate desoldering those little surface mount resistors that are right about 2mm long and something about half that wide, and how much more I hate soldering jumper wires in their place.

So, in a fit of absolute genius, I decided that I'd yank the processor board out of the G4 and remind myself just how sickeningly wonderful it is to sit there with a soldering iron, a magnifying glass, and hands that shake a bit even without caffeine and attempt to rewire the board using 30 gauge wrapping wire without, you know, breaking the trace, the solder pad (been there, done that, do NOT want to repeat that experience ever again. Ever.) or the wires.

Three hours into it and I've got 4 resistors removed, 16 solder pads cleaned, one 8 position DIP switch and 8 wires soldered, and 4 more wires half-soldered. Now I remember why it was that the last time I looked up how to reconfigure the resistors that control the multiplier on these processors that I decided that doing this to my 733 was enough for one year, and that I'd wait to do the 533s until next year.

*headdesks*

Yeah, that's about it. No real point to the post, just had to whine and moan about it somewhere. If you made it this far, thanks for reading.
 
OP
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Even more irritating:
When you get done and the stupid thing isn't getting enough voltage to hit 600MHz (the next step up from 533). *headdesks again*
 
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You have a lot more patience than i do!
 

dtravis7


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I take it you are overclocking? Done that a few times back in mostly my PC gaming days. I was quite good at soldering those little parts till lately my vision is not as good and it makes it hard to use Magnifiers and try to hold and solder at the same time. I can do it but it's not as easy as it once was!

Good luck.
 
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Wow, geeks of the world rejoice! You don't see rants about things like surface mount much these days! Phew! I am not the only geek on these forums! Phew! :D Good luck Geeky1!
 
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One handy tip for removal is to use two soldering irons at once.
 
OP
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Thanks for the support guys. :) Sadly, my patience didn't net me much this time around. My 733 I got up to 933... it'd actually POST (or whatever the Mac equivalent is...) at 1GHz, but it wouldn't finish loading.

The Dual 533 overclocked to a mighty, mighty impressive...

...wait for it...


...wait for it...

...533MHz.

Yes, that's right. If you do the math, that amounts to NO overclock at all.

Impressive. :Grimmace:

Now I need to try to up the I/O voltage on the cache chips and see what that does. More soldering. Yay.

mac57: no, you're not the only geek here. I did wind up with my screen name for a reason >_> ;D

Thorin: Thanks for the tip, I might try that. I've done it before, but the last time I did I ended up with a couple of hot irons in my lap when I slipped. x_x
 

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