I've been a satisfied reader of these forums for months now, gaining knowledge in areas I was completely ignorent about. But the one that seems a bit weird, is the pogo pin/solder battle. Instead of telling everyone not to use pogo pins because they are crap, and if they are they have to be idiots etc etc. Why not help people find a place to get a little soldering technique, and a few things to practice on. Everyone needs practice. And maybe there is some people out there with nerves shot to shit (like myself) from too much dope, smack, paintchips, whatever. But try to educate the "idiots" before exileing them into an endless pit of flameing remarks.

My Canadian 2 cents. (0.0043 USD)

You forgot Nitrous Oxide.


I have seen good soldering tutorials out there - check Google.

Just let the bogus elitism roll off your back. Truth is; soldering is easy, a monkey could do it, give it a shot, you will surprise yourself!

Gaz.

Al_Ghazi beat me to it LOL. Try these.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-...q=How+To+Solder

http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en...dering+Tutorial

http://www.techsupportalert.com/search/p0621.pdf

http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/...wto/solder.html

http://www.robotstore.com/download/How_to_solder_1.pdf

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/g...nott/elect3.htm

http://members.tripod.com/robomaniac_2001/id40.htm

http://www.teamnovak.com/How_to/How_To_Sol...lder/solder.htm

http://www.smspower.org/smsreader/solder.html

http://shop.eecs.ku.edu/solder.html

http://cyberecho.net:8080/brokentrace/Tutorial.pdf

http://www.kingbass.com/soldering101.html

If this doesn't help then there's always pogopins

why not spend$30 and get it soldered? rahter then have a shit pogo pin adapter that goes out of line every 3 days.

All you solder elitists are funny... I've had the Matrix for close to 2 months now and never had a problem. I've even changed the dip switches over a dozen times and haven't moved it out of place. The trick is to use a better screw... just how complicated is that?

The pogo pins misalign themselves after time, two months may not be long enough in your case.

It has been said hundreds of times before, I'll say it again:

The pogo pins press against the solder points on the mobo, they are held against the solder under extreme pressure. It is only a matter of time before the heat traveling through the contact points and the pressure from the pins causes the solder to "move" out from underneath the pins and possibly touch a vital area.

I myself am no soldering expert, but I managed to solder on a PC-Bioxx Chip, just grab yourself a low voltage pin point soldering iron, an old 486 Motherboard to practice on, and all will be well.

All you need is patience, and you'll get through it just fine. (Hell, I even dropped a HUGE glob of solder on my xbox board, it even joined a few capicitors, but with a lot of patience, and an insane amount of swearing, I manged to lift the solder up, and my box has been working like a champ.

Anyway, there's my two cents worth.

If I take my time, I have no problem with soldering. I just prefer to save some time and screwed the damn chip in. Big deal.
And so the points loose contact.. just a matter of getting out some rubbing alcohol.. cleaning it and screwing it back into place.

I don't know why I'm responding anyway... I'll never get my point across that soldering doesn't make you elite or cool.

This post has been edited by Nailed: Dec 13 2002, 01:02 AM

And this is a good iron to use. The one I bought at my local RadioShack was grey bit the one in the picture is blue. But for $7.99 you can't go wrong. I do have a Weller WES50 solder station but didn't use it when I put in my homebrew chip.

The pads I had to solder to when putting in my homebrew were tiny. The LPC pads are big so installing the Executer is easy. The only small pad to solder is D0 on the bottom of the board. I'm going to use that because I don't like the other spot on the top of the board.

Does anyone have the tutorial that was listed on xbox-scene a long time ago on soldering a fine pinch, woul really like if ne1 knew it off hand ive went searching for it and came up empty

I have not soldered since I built those Radio Shack kits as a kid in the 1970's but I managed to solder in my Messiah-X (now - an ancient Chip ... I know - but it has served me well).

Soldering is for morons. You heat the blob of metal and stick it on the board - it works. Forget the detail about getting the solder to the right temperature. just approach it from a simple point of view - all you are doing is putting tiny blobs of metal at the end of some wires.

it worked for me.

Gaz.

My Matrix has also been working well for over a month without losing alignment. Just like soldering, if you do it right, it will work good.

globalhec: Sorry, but I don't buy into a single word you are saying. First how can you have said this a hundred times with only 36 posts. Second, where is the solder going to move to touch something vital. ...there's no way something like that would ever happen.

Finally, I've had a lot of experience with these chips, and it's my opinion that these chip lose alignment due to the attachment screw. If you are lucky enough to get a 'Matrix-friendly' Xbox and are careful not to strip or overtighten the original screw, then you probably won't have these problems. Also, I have not heard from a single person who used the longer screw that I've been suggesting and have alignment issues after that.

Nailed, I totally agree with you; soldering elitists will never get the point. As elitists, I'm sure none of them have ever actually touched a Matrix. As such, they have no experience to speak from; just what they've heard, so their comments are pretty meaningless.

I might not be l33t, but at least I can remove my mod in a matter of minutes and upgradge to another mod without much trouble at all...try that with your solder mod.