soldering to pcb's

muchalucha · Post by **muchalucha** » Wed Apr 08, 2009 3:58 pm

i have bought an (origional) xbox with the sole intention of running linux on it .

For a while i have been presented by situations where soldering to the little holes in pcbs lined with solder is needed , below is a picture of exactly what i need to do , from what i can see they are less than 1/2 a mm across , is there a techniques to it or shall i do it as shown in the picture , my main concern is soldering them and snapping them off completely rendering the xbox useless.

edit: hate to be a backseat moderator but if you think this should go in the off topic section can you move it

Post by **BeligerAnt** » Sat Apr 11, 2009 7:57 pm

(Moved to off-topic as you suggested

)
Soldering wire links to via hles is very reliable and quite straightforward. It's often far easier than soldering to the pins of small surface-mount components.

First of all, you have to scrape the green solder resist off of the copper pads around the holes. Use a sharp craft knife and be careful not to cut through the tracks completely, or you're stuffed!

Next find some fine wire that will ideally go through the via holes, but the holes may only be 0.3mm diameter! The best wire is enamelled copper wire (known as magnet wire to the Americans) which is available in suitable diameters and the enamel provides insulation. Obviously you have to remove the enamel where you want to solder the wire.

If you have cleaned the via pads correctly they should be easy to solder with a fine soldering iron and some decent solder. Don't try to make wire links too short, otherwise when you solder the second end, the first end will unsolder itself!

HTH

muchalucha · Post by **muchalucha** » Thu Apr 16, 2009 9:58 am

thanks , ive now got a happy xbox media centre running dsl, i ended up stealing some enameled wire from an audio transformer

.