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On Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 4:53 PM, Max Siegieda <maxsiegieda@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > About those soldering skills of yours, bearing in mind that to solder these > would require 120 pins sat across about 3" of space it'd be impossible for > anyone however we don't solder these chips, we surface mount them. Surface > mounting uses roughly the same principle as soldering but on a smaller scale > so paste is put on the pins and then an air pencil is used to melt the paste > or alternatively an oven can be used, this means that just about anyone with > access to an oven and some reflow paste can do the job. You would be suprised just what you can solder by hand, certainly we have done 80-100 pin surface mount packages by hand, then checked with a microscope. It takes a lot of time and a very very steady hand but its not impossible. You can also use a hot air gun, like hair drier but much hotter, if you lash some heat direction baffels to protect chips you do not want to mess up near by, you can even transplant chips. I've done this on *very* old graphics cards to move memory chips from one 2MB card to make a 4MB card ;-p, judging the heat level is tricky, too much and you cook chips, to little and you make no/bad joints. Robin -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html