What's new
By:

Windjammers lifted pad fix?

Lungz01

Lungz01

Beginner
Joined
Mar 26, 2023
Messages
9
Reaction score
0
Location
Pennsylvania
Hey everyone! Relatively new to soldering and fixing pcbs, however attempted to troubleshoot this windjammers since It was inconsistently giving me distorted audio. Someone had clearly worked on this game previously to me and the pcb itself was a disaster of old flux and some dodgy soldering. I reflowed the M1 and V rom chips to realize my problem, V3 has a lifted pad. What exactly are my options to fixing this?
 

Attachments

  • 20230520_142556.jpg
    20230520_142556.jpg
    237.4 KB · Views: 121
  • 20230520_140138.jpg
    20230520_140138.jpg
    235.1 KB · Views: 124
You can melt the solder and push it back down to make it look nice but it's not connected to any thing on the back, so as long as it's soldered properly the other side it's not an issue.
 
  • Like
Reactions: nem
Ace` said:
You can melt the solder and push it back down to make it look nice but it's not connected to any thing on the back, so as long as it's soldered properly the other side it's not an issue.
Click to expand...
Appreciate the tip! So is this not the cause of my audio issues?
 
Ace` said:
You can melt the solder and push it back down to make it look nice but it's not connected to any thing on the back, so as long as it's soldered properly the other side it's not an issue.
Click to expand...
Did exactly what you said, bam all fixed, audio sounds great, thank you thank you!
 
WELL, it booted up perfectly fine, after a reboot now its back to it again, I'm starting to think a chip has gone bad.
 
Like I said that's not the issue. The sound is stored on S1 but I very much doubt it's that. I'd start with cleaning the edge connectors. If that doesn't fix it the surface mount PCM custom chip has a high failure rate.
 
Ace` said:
Like I said that's not the issue. The sound is stored on S1 but I very much doubt it's that. I'd start with cleaning the edge connectors. If that doesn't fix it the surface mount PCM custom chip has a high failure rate.
Click to expand...
Gotchya, I cleaned the connectors with deoxit many times, at first I was assuming it was a connection issue.
 
If you don't have a hot air station you can put Flux around the chip you suspect is bad and heat it up with a heat gun. It might reflow itself if you apply equal heat around that chip. This has helped me in a pinch.
 
That pin isn't connected to anything. it's Q11 and since the V-ROMs are 8-bit Q8-Q15 are unused. So the fact that it started working again after soldering it down was coincidence.

The pin directly the right in the close up looks like a cold solder joint and that is a power pin which could cause a EPROM to cut in and out.

I would inspect the pins and look for cold joints. the PCM chip could be the problem as well.

Most MVS Cart PCBs are have unplated through-holes, which means that for those ROMs if you don't see a trace going to the pin, then there is no connection to the pin since all traces would need to connect on the solder-side. This lack of plated through-holes means it's very easy to desolder these chips, but it also means that you can very easily peel up traces if you're not careful.
 
Kidkaos said:
If you don't have a hot air station you can put Flux around the chip you suspect is bad and heat it up with a heat gun. It might reflow itself if you apply equal heat around that chip. This has helped me in a pinch.
Click to expand...
Great tip!
 
twistedsymphony said:
That pin isn't connected to anything. it's Q11 and since the V-ROMs are 8-bit Q8-Q15 are unused. So the fact that it started working again after soldering it down was coincidence.

The pin directly the right in the close up looks like a cold solder joint and that is a power pin which could cause a EPROM to cut in and out.

I would inspect the pins and look for cold joints. the PCM chip could be the problem as well.

Most MVS Cart PCBs are have unplated through-holes, which means that for those ROMs if you don't see a trace going to the pin, then there is no connection to the pin since all traces would need to connect on the solder-side. This lack of plated through-holes means it's very easy to desolder these chips, but it also means that you can very easily peel up traces if you're not careful.
Click to expand...
Greatly appreciate this info! I will recheck every joint and make sure nothing is cold!
 
twistedsymphony said:
That pin isn't connected to anything. it's Q11 and since the V-ROMs are 8-bit Q8-Q15 are unused. So the fact that it started working again after soldering it down was coincidence.

The pin directly the right in the close up looks like a cold solder joint and that is a power pin which could cause a EPROM to cut in and out.

I would inspect the pins and look for cold joints. the PCM chip could be the problem as well.

Most MVS Cart PCBs are have unplated through-holes, which means that for those ROMs if you don't see a trace going to the pin, then there is no connection to the pin since all traces would need to connect on the solder-side. This lack of plated through-holes means it's very easy to desolder these chips, but it also means that you can very easily peel up traces if you're not careful.
Click to expand...
Reflowed anything that didn't look perfect, still the problem persists
 
Ace` said:
Like I said that's not the issue. The sound is stored on S1 but I very much doubt it's that. I'd start with cleaning the edge connectors. If that doesn't fix it the surface mount PCM custom chip has a high failure rate.
Click to expand...

S1 is for the fix layer, not sound. ;)
 
I'm afraid it's likely the PCM chip. In my experience the problem can come and go when one of these chips is going bad.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top