Soldering to the controller chip's legs

From Chiip-Wiki

Contents 1 Alternative soldering points 1.1 Preventing disaster 1.2 Fixing a damaged soldering point 1.3 Alternative soldering points 1.4 The right tools 1.5 Preparing the cable 1.6 Preparing the chip 1.7 Soldering the cable to the leg 1.8 Cleaning up 1.9 Bending up the leg

Alternative soldering points

For various reasons, you might not be able to solder to the soldering points marked I(nput), O(utput), C(lock). This is most likely due to a mistake you made during soldering which damaged or destroyed the soldering points and left you with either the exposed traces under the transparent coating of the PCB or no distinguishable traces at all. Losing the soldering points does not mean you damaged your drive completely but installing a MOD chip becomes much more difficult and risky.

Preventing disaster

For inexperienced hobbyists soldering the mod to the drive might be tricky. Follow these rules to avoid damaging your soldering points at all.

Use an appropriate soldering iron. An 8 Watt soldering needle would be perfect. 15W is still OK. 30W needs some special attention. 40W is dangerous but still possible. 80W spells instant death for your soldering points.

Keep the time of contact between the iron and the soldering point as short as possible. Try not to get the solder from the soldering point of your cable but coat the cable with the solder and have the two solder blobs melt into one another. Also five seconds of constant heat on the PCB is too much. Keep cool and remove the iron after three seconds. Repeat until cable and soldering point stick together.

Be careful when applying soldering flux. Flux should go to the exact place where the solder should connect not between the solder points. The worst case scenario would be that the solder from one point runs into the solder of the next point melting both points together. Then your only choice would be to desolder.

When desoldering for what ever reason you always risk loosing the soldering point by melting and sucking the whole thing off the PCB. Apply the soldering iron to the cable not the soldering point.

The I,O,C points are just blobs of solder on the PCB which connect to a very thin trace on the PCB and that's it. Applying any kind of force to the soldering points will yank them right of the board. So be extra careful not to pull on the cables once they are firmly solder to the PCB.

These are just some pointers to help you prevent unrepairable damage to the soldering points.

Fixing a damaged soldering point

Nothing is impossible if you have the right skills and tools but repairing a soldering point once it is gone is a bad idea. You risk damaging the neighbouring soldering points or even worse vital parts of the PCB thus bricking your drive completely. Should disaster strike during your modding attempts and you loose a point follow these rules.

Keep calm! Do not try anything reckless to repair the point. Applying solder to the place where the old point was once will not work. Even with flux you'll never get it to connect and just mess up your PCB. Bricking danger!!!

Take a rest. You're probably stressed because you finally got the programmer built, the Chiip flashed and now your stuck at the final step. You are probably quite shaky now. To successfully install the Chiip with the instruction below you'll need a steady hand and some concentration and time. So take a walk or even call it a day.

Alternative soldering points

You cool? Ready to finally get the Chiip in your Wii? Here's what you can do to fix your soldering point fiasco. Follow the traces of the soldering point up to the controller chip. That's the chip referred to as DMS, D2A or D2B and is clearly marked as such. You can solder the cable directly to the chip's leg. To find out which leg is the right one follow the trace carefully or use one of the high resolution pictures of the PCB included in most Wii mod chip installation guides. Once you have found the leg make a mark on the chip's surface with a sharpened pencil for future orientation.
What you are about to do might easily brick your drive chip so be careful and keep in mind that the author of this article is not responsible for any further damage your console might take!!!

The right tools

If you used a soldering iron above 15W you are strongly advised to get a colder one. Do not make the same mistake twice.

Get the thinnest soldering tip you can get. Anything thicker than the leg you want to solder to is to thick.

Flux is highly recommended but use it sparely this time.

You got to make a choice between wire or cable. When using a wire make sure it is very thin. Thinner than the leg would be perfect. In this article we will use cable.

A very sharp and thin scalpel.

Preparing the cable

The cable's core consists of multiple very thin copper wires which are loosely twisted together coated in an insulator, possibly rubber or plastic.

Remove about 1 cm of the insulator.

Remove all core wires expect two.

Twist these two wires into one firm cable.

Dip the wires in flux and coat them in solder. The coat must be thin and no excess solder must be present on the cable.

Now cut of the tip of the coated wires so that the remaining cable is about as long as the leg minus the part of the leg that touches the PCB.

Preparing the chip

This is dangerous but if you trust your bending more than your soldering you might want to gently bend the legs next to the target leg away from the latter so you do not solder a short. Be careful here because these legs are fragile. You should bend them back once the cable is applied to prevent another short with their neighbouring legs.

Apply some flux to the leg but not to the part that connects to the PCB. Getting solder here might cause a short with the neighbouring legs. We want to solder the cable to the leg not the "foot" of the chip.

Soldering the cable to the leg

This is the most difficult part. You might want to fix the cable to the chip with some strong tape and bend the cable in a way that it already touches the leg. Now apply the soldering iron for a second. Remember your very close to some very fragile electronics now. You could easily fry the chip if you get nervous and keep the iron on the cable for two long. Test the connection with a multimeter between the other end of the cable and the end of the leg.
Should you spill solder over the other legs keep calm and get it all of and restart by preparing a new cable.

Cleaning up

Once the connection between the leg and the cable is complete you need to clean up the soldering job. Make sure that you have no short between two legs. Use the scalpel and scrape of any excess solder on the left and right of the leg and again make sure that no two legs are touching. If you have not done so already, fix the cable to the chip with tape to prevent the cable from coming off of even bending the leg around. If all is well, congratulations, you just solved your broken soldering point problem.

Bending up the leg

Some old-school modders may remember desoldering an bending up the desired leg to make the soldering job easier as was done on the Sega Saturn's GPU for example. The author of this article considered this solution and decided it is far more risky than keeping the leg connected to the PCB. The desoldering might damage neighbouring legs and breaking the leg off would mean that no mod chip could ever be fitted into the damaged drive. Take this into consideration before attempting this.