Soldering Newbee.

dirtybeagles · Post by **dirtybeagles** » Thu May 05, 2016 6:28 am

When I started this project, I watched the first video and from see the modifing of the case, it looked doable so I started going through the modification of my broken gameboy that I got from ebay.

Here is what I accomplished. Looks pretty good minus the fact that one of my button holes was cut a little to wide. https://imgur.com/a/YeKJh

So then came the soldering and scratching off the tracers. Man! This was by far the hardest. It took me about 2-3 hours for me to get the top left wires attached to the board... and to be honest, I do not think I did it correctly (hard to see from my image). I did buy a multi meter and will test it but I would recommend to NOT hot glue it until you tested your soldering trace because of how close they are to each other and how difficult it is to get them to attach. I used CAT5 wires to make my cables and they need to be twisted a little after you cut it or the little copper wires at the end will fray.

The only advise I can give is to get a little bitty droplit of solder on the end of your iron and in a sweeping motion from the wire end to the board, sweep the iron tip away from the wire to the tracer on the board until it sticks. It took me a few times to get it to stick and it was very frustrating, and I still wont know if I was successful until I test it. Here is the multi meter I bought off amazon: http://goo.gl/DCuysu

Did anyone else have trouble attching the wires to the board?

ylwsub68 · Post by **ylwsub68** » Thu May 05, 2016 6:32 am

I'm at this point myself but I haven't tried it yet. I'll keep this tip in mind! I eventually got the copper exposed at all the right places but it really doesn't look like it's enough for good contact. But we'll see!

dirtybeagles · Post by **dirtybeagles** » Thu May 05, 2016 6:45 am

Well, I will post my results this evening (EST) when I test the multi meter. I am super nervious because of the amount of time it took me to connect the wires. I am assuming I screwed up scraping off the tracers.

When I looked at wermy's picture, it was difficult for me to tell what to scrap off (note: I have NEVER done this before). What was throwing me off was that in my attachment picture, it looks like there are two shades of green. A DARK green and a LIGHT green color. Is the tracer the little lines (the LIGHT green -in my picture, not wermy's, my green seemed to be swapped in color from wermy's) or it the DARK green?

At first I followed Wermy's example, but I then noticed that the green colors on my board were pretty much swapped compared to his. So I was like, shit, did I just scrap off the wrong tracer? I continued anyway and did the best I could with following the little LIGHT green lines (in my picture) and will test tonight....

crispy_tofu · Post by **crispy_tofu** » Thu May 05, 2016 7:13 am

dirtybeagles wrote: Is the tracer the little lines (the LIGHT green -in my picture, not wermy's, my green seemed to be swapped in color from wermy's) or it the DARK green?
:

The traces are actually the light green lines, while the dark green are the gaps between them. If you're not sure, you could probably run a finger along the board, and the raised sections would be the traces.

Xorxfon · Post by **Xorxfon** » Thu May 05, 2016 7:39 am

It took me a good hour and a half to solder those top left tracers. I also found it difficult to bridge the ground in the two spots so I just scraped the tracers off and used the conductive copper tape to make the connections. All of the other wires took about twenty minutes to get on (bigger gaps made it much simpler). But PLEASE test all of your connections before you hot glue them in!

dirtybeagles · Post by **dirtybeagles** » Thu May 05, 2016 8:12 am

@crispy_tofu

What if I scrapped off the wrong section on my board? Am I hosed? Could I scrap a different area on my board and just solder the mistakes closed? I assume if I use Solder to close the mistakes, I need to make sure the solder is not touching correct?

solder · Post by **solder** » Thu May 05, 2016 8:59 am

I'd close the "mistakes" with something that doesn't conduct. Unless you scrapped away the whole copper and it needs to be reconnected.

YouTube · Post by **wermy** » Thu May 05, 2016 9:07 am

crispy_tofu wrote: The traces are actually the light green lines, while the dark green are the gaps between them. If you're not sure, you could probably run a finger along the board, and the raised sections would be the traces.

I guess it sort of depends on the lighting.

To me they look darker from most angles. But yes the raised lines are the traces.

dirtybeagles · Post by **dirtybeagles** » Thu May 05, 2016 11:32 am

I guess, noob question here... but how do I test the resistance with the multi meter? I have two ends, a black end and a red end. Do I connect one of these endpoints to the other side of my wire and just press the buttons with my finger? Is there a special setting on the multi meter?

Sorry about this.

Thatbraziliann · Post by **Thatbraziliann** » Thu May 05, 2016 11:49 am

dirtybeagles wrote:I guess, noob question here... but how do I test the resistance with the multi meter? I have two ends, a black end and a red end. Do I connect one of these endpoints to the other side of my wire and just press the buttons with my finger? Is there a special setting on the multi meter?

Sorry about this.

Check out this video that was posted on the other forum about multimeters. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPGoMbVSUu8
To test resistance I believe starts at minute 1:50 but watch the whole thing it is very informative.

Cheers!

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