[charlie_ps2]

Originally posted by jackng
Yo charlie my man,

I got the FBGA...thanks mate,

I'll be installing it later after work...hopefully to have some good news for all of you...

Thanks Jack. Now we know it really does take under a week to go from UK to Singapore. That's a load off my mind and Grahame in Australia will be pleased too.

On the soldering side your install guide omits the following info:

The recommended equipment needed for the soldering job is:

a) 15 watt soldering iron for the solder work (not higher or damage could result)
b) 100 watt soldering iron for stripping enamelled copper wire**
c) 0.10 mm solder tip (this is very small)
d) 33 or 35 swg wire** for all but 3.3v and GROUND
e) “Normal” sheathed wire for 3.3v and GROUND
f) Liquid Flux
g) Solder paste
h) De-solder braid
i) Pair of safety razor blades & Blue Tack to hold them in place
j) Double sided tape to fix the mod chip into final place

** Self-Stripping, enamelled copper wire is recommended rather than sheathed as it requires less space and is easier to feed through to the other side of the motherboard.

The diagrams show PADs and VIAs (The via is a link through to both sides of the board and isn't tinned). It is straightforward to solder a wire to a PAD. If there is a problem, there is usually the source to which a solder can be made.

However soldering a wire to a VIA must be performed with great care since damage to a VIA can ruin the motherboard.

Generally, this is the soldering technique where the small processor pins are involved:

· Strip the solder end of the enamelled copper wire using the hot 100W iron.
· Dip the stripped end into the solder paste
· Squirt a small amount of flux onto the CPU or BIOS pins to assist adhesion of the solder
· Solder to the pin using the razor blade technique described in the guide.

PLEASE NOTE THAT IF YOU HAVE A v3 OR v4 PS2 THEN THE DETAIL DIAGRAMS ARE ON WWW.CHINA-MESSIAH.COM. THE BRIDGES THAT HAVE TO BE SET ON THE MOD CHIP DIFFER BETWEEN DIFFERENT PS2 VERSIONS.

It is recommended for v4 PS2s not to use the alternate points but to solder directly to the CPU as problems have been reported with alternate point installation. (The "vias" are difficult)