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From: gtoal@castle.ed.ac.uk (G Toal)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: Repairs (was Re: Floppy drive disk errors)
Message-ID: <11265@castle.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 24 Jun 91 21:05:50 GMT
References: <11238@castle.ed.ac.uk> <7961@acorn.co.uk>
Distribution: comp
Organization: Edinburgh University
Lines: 31

In article <7961@acorn.co.uk> osmith@acorn.co.uk (Owen Smith) writes:
:In article <11238@castle.ed.ac.uk> gtoal@castle.ed.ac.uk (G Toal) writes:
:
:>Does anyone know of a local (London) service centre who isn't afraid
:>to unsolder a chip and replace it?  Preferably while you wait?
:
:Teach yourself to solder and then do it yourself. To remove a chip when
:you haven't got one of those amazing chip desolder tools, you use cutters
:to cut all the legs off the chip. Then you can desolder the legs one by one.
:You will need a solder sucker for this - otherwise you'll never get the
:solder out of the plated-through holes. Getting a friend to help you also
:works wonders - one person with the soldering iron on one side of the board,
:the other person with the sucker on the other side. Solder a turned pin chip
:socket in, and put the replacement chip in the socket. No problem. I use one
:of those dirt cheap Antex 17W soldering irons, so you don't even need
:expensive gear.
:
:Owen.

I *can* solder - in my formative years I soldered 200 BBC Micro Ram/Rom
boards (remember the Acorn User sponsored one?) which is mainly why
I never want to see a soldering iron again :-)

I _could_ if I felt like it cut off the legs and solder one on that way,
but I'd rather desolder it properly, and I'm not really happy with
desoldering and resoldering a board like this.  I'd rather leave it to
someone who does this sort of thing regularly, even though it's a
simple job.  It's *because* it's a simple job that I'm annoyed that
so-called Acorn 'service centres' refuse to do it.

Graham