Re: [eug-lug]SMT soldering
On Wednesday 10 December 2003 03:45 am, T. Joseph Carter wrote: : Does anyone here do surface mount soldering or know anyone who does? I'm : considering a memory upgrade for my TiVo. It comes with only 16 megs and : adding another 16 involves adding two SMT chips and reconfiguring the : device to use them. I'm told it can be done without special tools if you : have a low-powered iron, tiny solder, liquid flux, etc, but the other : prerequisites are sharp eyes (or good optics) and a steady hand. I lack : these. ;) I do, but Im not there right now :( As far as what they say, Id say they have things backwards. You almost never want a low power iron, you want a hot iron (but a very fine tip (and one with aa slight flat surface works best). You gotta be good, and work fast. Ive done a lot of repair from people that were not good.. it really sucks, do it right, do it fast, and dont burn it. A low watt iron gets everything hot before it melts the solder, and riskes damage, a hot iron gets just the specific area hot, but risks burning (if your not fast), and thermoshock. Is it adding chips to empty locations? or is it piggybacking chips? What is the lead/land size? Pretty much all flux is liquid (unless your sweatting pipes, or doing stained glass. Fluxes come in 2 catagories, waterbased and resin based. resin based were phased out over 10 years ago because cleaning required solvents (we used a lot of freon(sp?) back in the day... I did some testing and found that dawn dishwashing liquid was about the best for stuff you could find around the house (dont laugh, it really works!) The idea behind flux is to remove oxides. Most of the solder you find will be resin core solder, and requires solvents to clean (alcohol works, burned flux may need a little help with an acid brush...), really burned flux may require an orange stick (or tooth pick...) ESD/EOS is a big consideration too... gotta be safe and not volt your circuitry, or you will end up with dead tivo (or worse... psycho-tivo!) Soldering really isnt that hard to do... Ive worked with a lot of people that can do it in their sleep... but there are a lot of people that say they can, but dont really know what they are doing... The only think I can suggest, is watch them work on stuff before you let them loose on your tivo! : Another option, apparently, is a new device that takes a PC133 512M DIMM : and read-caches the entire database in RAM. That alone would probably be : a decent speed boost, but it's a more expensive upgrade and would only : affect the database. uhh pc133 ram is fairly cheap... check ebay, you may find one for $20... (prolly spend more like $50...) : : : (For anyone wondering, I did attempt to find out and as far as I know, : nobody has tried to overclock the 50MHz series 1 TiVo..) hmmm... seems to me that if your CPU is 50 mhz, then why do you need pc-133 ram? isnt pc-133 for 133mhz bus? how do you get a 133mhz bus on a 50mhz cpu? Is that a motorola chip? Jamie : : ___ : EuG-LUG mailing list : [EMAIL PROTECTED] : http://mailman.efn.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/eug-lug -- ¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø¤º°`°º¤ø,¸¸,ø¤º°`°º¤ø The Famous Joke of the Day One Liner! Compromise : The art of dividing a cake in such a way that everybody believes he got the biggest piece. ___ EuG-LUG mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.efn.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/eug-lug
Re: [eug-lug]SMT soldering
On Wed, Dec 10, 2003 at 11:43:47AM -0500, Jamie wrote: I do, but Im not there right now :( Well, I was kinda trying to avoid sending it somewhere.. As far as what they say, Id say they have things backwards. You almost never want a low power iron, you want a hot iron (but a very fine tip (and one with aa slight flat surface works best). You gotta be good, and work fast. Ive done a lot of repair from people that were not good.. it really sucks, do it right, do it fast, and dont burn it. They suggest tinning the tip and just using it to press the lead in place. That's all it takes for the tiny leads.. A low watt iron gets everything hot before it melts the solder, and riskes damage, a hot iron gets just the specific area hot, but risks burning (if your not fast), and thermoshock. Is it adding chips to empty locations? or is it piggybacking chips? What is the lead/land size? Empty spaces on the board next to the existing memory. Here's the link to the upgrade for my model, including a reprint of the soldering instructions which appear on the forum: http://www.9thtee.com/tivomemory.htm Pretty much all flux is liquid (unless your sweatting pipes, or doing stained glass. Fluxes come in 2 catagories, waterbased and resin based. resin based were phased out over 10 years ago because cleaning required solvents (we used a lot of freon(sp?) back in the day... I did some testing and found that dawn dishwashing liquid was about the best for stuff you could find around the house (dont laugh, it really works!) The idea behind flux is to remove oxides. Most of the solder you find will be resin core solder, and requires solvents to clean (alcohol works, burned flux may need a little help with an acid brush...), really burned flux may require an orange stick (or tooth pick...) I believe it is still common to see solder use resin core, but a liquid flux is recommended for this rather tan relying on the stuff in the solder. ESD/EOS is a big consideration too... gotta be safe and not volt your circuitry, or you will end up with dead tivo (or worse... psycho-tivo!) Yeah, I'm a bit concerned that they don't talk about this. DRAM is notably picky about ESD. Soldering really isnt that hard to do... Ive worked with a lot of people that can do it in their sleep... but there are a lot of people that say they can, but dont really know what they are doing... The only think I can suggest, is watch them work on stuff before you let them loose on your tivo! It was mainly something I was considering doing if I am going to add more space to the thing, which is something I'm planning to do actually. : Another option, apparently, is a new device that takes a PC133 512M DIMM : and read-caches the entire database in RAM. That alone would probably be : a decent speed boost, but it's a more expensive upgrade and would only : affect the database. uhh pc133 ram is fairly cheap... check ebay, you may find one for $20... (prolly spend more like $50...) True enough, but the upgrade card is not. ;) : : : (For anyone wondering, I did attempt to find out and as far as I know, : nobody has tried to overclock the 50MHz series 1 TiVo..) hmmm... seems to me that if your CPU is 50 mhz, then why do you need pc-133 ram? isnt pc-133 for 133mhz bus? how do you get a 133mhz bus on a 50mhz cpu? I suspect that any DIMM I could find would work, including PC66 and slower. The bus is 25MHz after all. I think they're just assuming that at this point it's pretty much all PC133 for SDR memory and that anyone who would know differently knows what they can use. Is that a motorola chip? The series 1 is, yes. Series 2 machines are ARM chips, 4x the speed, and twice the memory (isn't that right Bob?) The Series 2 machines are not very hackable since the ROM verifies that the ramdisk is signed by TiVo before it runs anything and the ramdisk replaces any modified boot files with fresh copies. If you defeat the ROM (that is, dump it, modify it, make a new ROM chip, amd replace the existing ROM on the TiVo which is a SMT chip), you can then modify your ramdisk not to blow away your changes. Once your changes are not blown away, you can tweak your TiVo to your heart's content, until a new software upgrade replaces the ramdisk with one that blows away your changes and hopefully doesn't turn your TiVo into a brick when a ROM verification fails, leaving you without a TiVo till you pop the cover, put the drive in your PC, boot a custom Linux dist, and tweak everything until it works again.. Needless to say, despite how slow they are, we rather like series 1 TiVo. You can open it up and add a network card (series 2 boxes have USB ports for this purpose) and stream data right off your TiVo (pay extra to do this on a series 2 box), even copy shows from one TiVo to another (not possible with series 2) or extract video across the network, strip out the commercials using video
Re: [eug-lug]SMT soldering
On Wednesday 10 December 2003 08:20 pm, T. Joseph Carter wrote: : On Wed, Dec 10, 2003 at 11:43:47AM -0500, Jamie wrote: : I do, but Im not there right now :( : : Well, I was kinda trying to avoid sending it somewhere.. : : As far as what they say, Id say they have things backwards. You almost : never want a low power iron, you want a hot iron (but a very fine tip : (and one with aa slight flat surface works best). You gotta be good, and : work fast. Ive done a lot of repair from people that were not good.. it : really sucks, do it right, do it fast, and dont burn it. : : They suggest tinning the tip and just using it to press the lead in place. : That's all it takes for the tiny leads.. well... its called wetting the tip tinning is what you do to the tip whne your done useing it (before you turn off your iron, you clean it, and tin it). when your tacking a part in place, you put the part where you want it, clean your iron, wet the tip, and tack the part in place by just touching the solder (not the iron) to the joint, and remove the iron. then when the part is inplace how you like it, you flux it up good, clean and wet your tip, and run your iron along the leads while feeding solder into the joint the top is on. On really small (fine pitch) leads you often dont even touch the leads (just the lands). I ofthen just put down a bunch of solder, and then fluxed it up good, and ran the iron tip on top of the lead from the component toward the end of the lead. this give a nice clean joint and clean space between leads... : : A low watt iron gets everything hot before it melts the solder, and : riskes damage, a hot iron gets just the specific area hot, but risks : burning (if your not fast), and thermoshock. : Is it adding chips to empty locations? or is it piggybacking chips? : What is the lead/land size? : : Empty spaces on the board next to the existing memory. Here's the link to : the upgrade for my model, including a reprint of the soldering : instructions which appear on the forum: : : http://www.9thtee.com/tivomemory.htm thats some of the worst soldering ive seen ! (except when i was doing training...) I saw some stuff... some people just shouldnt be allowed to play with hot surfaces... Seriously though, it looks like someone that was maybe an engineer or novice did the soldering. In production, solder joints should all look consistant, shiney, and have nice filets. (and no bridging). the instructions are good enough I guess... dont need any tweezers, the chip can easily be held in place with your finger while tacking, after tacking it wont move. The more flux you use, the more you will have to clean up afterwards, but for soldering quality, there is no such thing as too much flux. I used to use it like maple syrup (we had machines to do the cleanup). even w/out the machine, alcohol will clean up rosin flux, an even if you have to use 1/2 a bottle of alcohol to clean it up, who cares?? alcohol costs like $1 a bottle (note: do the cleanup outside so you dont have to breath rubbing alcohol all night.) I suspect you could do as good as the photo (might want a big magnifying glass in your case...) If you use lots of flux, and use the technique i mentioned about putting the tip of your iron at the top of the leg, and moving it toward the end of the lead, and off, you will end up with nice clean solder joints, no bridging, and inspection will be easy. Jamie : : Pretty much all flux is liquid (unless your sweatting pipes, or doing : stained glass. Fluxes come in 2 catagories, waterbased and resin based. : resin based were phased out over 10 years ago because cleaning required : solvents (we used a lot of freon(sp?) back in the day... I did some : testing and found that dawn dishwashing liquid was about the best for : stuff you could find around the house (dont laugh, it really works!) The : idea behind flux is to remove oxides. Most of the solder you find will : be resin core solder, and requires solvents to clean (alcohol works, : burned flux may need a little help with an acid brush...), really burned : flux may require an orange stick (or tooth pick...) : : I believe it is still common to see solder use resin core, but a liquid : flux is recommended for this rather tan relying on the stuff in the : solder. : : ESD/EOS is a big consideration too... gotta be safe and not volt your : circuitry, or you will end up with dead tivo (or worse... psycho-tivo!) : : Yeah, I'm a bit concerned that they don't talk about this. DRAM is : notably picky about ESD. : : Soldering really isnt that hard to do... Ive worked with a lot of people : that can do it in their sleep... but there are a lot of people that say : they can, but dont really know what they are doing... The only think I : can suggest, is watch them work on stuff before you let them loose on : your tivo! : : It was mainly something I was considering doing if I am going to add more : space to
Re: [eug-lug]SMT soldering
On Wed, Dec 10, 2003 at 09:55:30PM -0500, Jamie wrote: : http://www.9thtee.com/tivomemory.htm thats some of the worst soldering ive seen ! (except when i was doing training...) I saw some stuff... some people just shouldnt be allowed to play with hot surfaces... Seriously though, it looks like someone that was maybe an engineer or novice did the soldering. In production, solder joints should all look consistant, shiney, and have nice filets. (and no bridging). I know what good soldering looks like and wasn't even considering what the soldering they'd done looked like. I was thinking pasting it to give you an idea of the size of the pins (microscopic to my eyes..) I suspect you could do as good as the photo (might want a big magnifying glass in your case...) FWIW, I can't solder a plain DIP of the TTL variety. I lack the steady hands to avoid bridging in that sort of situation. ___ EuG-LUG mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.efn.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/eug-lug
Re: [eug-lug]SMT soldering
On Wednesday 10 December 2003 10:27 pm, T. Joseph Carter wrote: : On Wed, Dec 10, 2003 at 09:55:30PM -0500, Jamie wrote: : : http://www.9thtee.com/tivomemory.htm : : thats some of the worst soldering ive seen ! (except when i was doing : training...) I saw some stuff... some people just shouldnt be allowed to : play with hot surfaces... : Seriously though, it looks like someone that was maybe an engineer or : novice did the soldering. In production, solder joints should all look : consistant, shiney, and have nice filets. (and no bridging). : : I know what good soldering looks like and wasn't even considering what the : soldering they'd done looked like. I was thinking pasting it to give you : an idea of the size of the pins (microscopic to my eyes..) They apear to be 15 mil, fairly big by some standards (those 3 or 5 mil bend real easy!) It may be a difficult task for you, but someone that does SMT soldering should find it pretty easy... : : I suspect you could do as good as the photo (might want a big magnifying : glass in your case...) : : FWIW, I can't solder a plain DIP of the TTL variety. I lack the steady : hands to avoid bridging in that sort of situation. Well... Id do it for you, but Im not there, and I dont have my tools here... If you want to ship it to me, with the parts, and a soldering iron, flux, and solder, Ill do it. Jamie : : ___ : EuG-LUG mailing list : [EMAIL PROTECTED] : http://mailman.efn.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/eug-lug -- If Bill Gates is the Devil then Linus Torvalds must be the Messiah. -- Unknown source ___ EuG-LUG mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.efn.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/eug-lug
