Run of bad luck with mods.

That makes me think the bios mod might be overkill for my needs. I"ve got a chip sitting around, could trade it for something else if plans don't go through.

 

i found the saturn bios chip to come off pretty easy with just a little desolder braid used and a thin blade to lift each pin and pry it off as it was glued in place, no nasty pad lifting

 

I joked to Bad_ad this morning it might be due to being a US console and therefor being weak sauce!

After having done it the bios mod is worth it, if done right!

 

Yeah I'm not normal. The market for Americans planning to region mod from a JP console, rather than toward, isn't exactly overflowing.

 

Well as bad as the install looked the f'ker runs just fine! Had it going for about 3hrs swapping different region games with no issues.

 

I region modded a V-Saturn that way once, for myself; all my games were US originals or patched backups.

On the original topic, I just spent 2+ hours trying to put a Mayumi V4 I got from Bad_Ad into a near-new 7001 PS1 I recently found. It all went great until I manged to bridge two legs trying to put wire 6 into place (see pic).




Anyone who has done this particular combination of machine and mod will know that chip is freakin' tiny! Spent most of that 2 hours trying to wick solder out from under the legs - checking in between attempts with a magnifying glass - I eventually got it with my rarely used solder pump - tacked the wire back in place and - success! Then I discovered that where I had glued the chip to the board was exactly in line with two of those weird raised holes on the heavy metal shield between the board and the laser assembly - had to drill them out to get the stupid thing back together. Doing a PSone on the weekend - hopefully it will go a little smoother.

 

Wick usually works great for bridged legs, the trick is to use flux. Without flux, wick barely even works.

 

Cant say I have ever needed to apply flux to get wick to work.

 

Yeah, use flux but don't forget to clean toroughly afterwards with methanol or another flux solvent.

 

this, but there are some wicks out there that seam to be cheap and nasty and dont pick up the solder very well to start with, flux helps in this regard

 

This is true, I stick to 1 brand of desoldering braid - all the others have been pretty crap (too thin, doesnt conduct heat very well).

Stuff I get is: http://www.maplin.co.uk/de-soldering-reels-10m-length-1.5mm-width-33702

Unfortunately I cant find it elsewhere, but even at £12.99, it is 10 meters. So it lasts a decent amount of time.

 

I always use flux with my wick and it sucks in turbo mode.
Without flux it sort of works at best. And not at all at worst. I doubt any braid will work as well without flux than with it.
The brand of wick that is available here is MG chemicals.
Maybe its not the best, but its not very expensive and I use it with MG chemicals Rosin flux, which is dirt cheap.
I bought a bottle years ago which was about 250 ml, I diluted to 500 ml with methanol and it works just as well ( better actually ).
I put the stuff in a blunted syringe.

 

Ofc if there's already enough good flux you don't need to add some. I use braids taht have no flux at all (for some completely logical reasons) and when I need to desolder stuff using them, I gotta add some flux otherwise it's not really effective.

 

I believe I need to buy a rework station pretty soon. I went around testing all the caps and the resisters on my toploader and only one cap seems to be popped so I am going to steal parts from my junker nes frontloader ( working just in ugly shape) and hopefully fix it. i'll post progress when i find time.

 

I recommend you just buy new parts, especially for caps.
Edit: also, SMD electrolitycs are fairly easy to take off without heat, just grab them with pliers and twist them gently until they brake off.
Maybe its not recommended in an ideal world but Ive replaced hundreds of those and have not lifted a single pad yet.

 

I'm going to wait since my soldering iron is going too. Also the caps on my toploader aren't smd.


edit:And I am pretty sure the problem is the video chips.

 

I second not reusing caps. They are so cheap there is no point and you will just cause yourself more headaches