James’ Blog

Knackered opto chips

Posted on August 13th, 2006 by James.
Categories: Pinball.

I’ve descovered that a load more of my opto chips were knackered! This new set were hidden under the playfield so I didn’t see them before, on a secret PCB tucked under a pile of cables thicker than my arm.

I poked it with my multimeter and I decided that the most likely broken bit is the chip in the bottom left corner of the pic. .. which is the most annoying chip to be broken!! Because, if you look on the board, all the other chips have got easy remove/replace clip things that they slot into.. so changing *those* chips is super easy, you can just pull them straight out! .. But oh no, the one that’s knackered today is the one that’s soldered into the corner!

One trip to maplin later and I have a little bag with a nice new chip in it and a chip holder, so I don’t have to do this again!

I did my best every de-soldering job on this chip and it was a b*rd to remove!

De-soldering involves using a soldering iron to melt the solder, then using a solder-sucker to suck up the hot liquid solder, it’s basically a spring loaded syringe with a button on the side that makes it pop and suck up the solder. .. Anyway, I de-soldered all the joints perfectly and the b*rd chip was still stuck to the board! It was like someone had superglued the thing down! Rachel, Alex and I all took a good look at it with a magnifying glass and couldn’t see anything holding it on, but it was still stuck fast.

After nearly breaking two of my very nice small screwdrivers on it and nearly ripping off my finger nails I decided to resort to using a large pair of pliers to CRUSH IT OUT OF EXISTANCE! .. As the pliers of doom wrapped their death giving arms around the neck of the chip it screamed out in terror.. then fell onto the floor, writing in pain and politely appologised for being a poo head, before dissapearing into the wastepaper basket (of doom). The new chip is working awesomely BTW 🙂

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