Hello all, I have a wii that I purchased on launch date. I recently bought a wiikey. I chose to solder using the wire method. I decided to solder the wires to the wiikey first, no problems there. I was able to solder 4 out of the 6 wires to the wii board. here is my problem....two of the solder points that are on the wii board have come off.(the metal points on the wii board that you solder the wire to) Can this be fixed? What do I do? Your help is really appreciated!
First, you need the right kind of wire. There is a type of wire you can pick up at radioshack (I forget what it's called. I want to say "wrapping wire" but it doesn't seem right). It's very thin, so I strip it with fingernail clippers to avoid cutting. To attach to the legs of the chip, you will need a low-wattage soldering iron. I use a 15-watt. Use silver core solder, as it has a low melting point. Put solder on the end of the wire, heat up the chip leg, and touch the wire to the leg. Remove the iron from the leg. The wire should hold the chip.
I also need help soldering wiikey to board. Should i solder with no wires? Seems scary, but i cant get 30 0r 32 gauge wire here, best i can do is 24 gauge solid wire. Another guy recommended using the inner wires from a cat 45 network cable, but they look to be around 20-24 gauge any recommendations? Skip wires altogether and solder to board (please no!!) or use these wires from inside of network cable?
Or how about the stranded wire from the old cd rom audio cables, work at a computer store, just looking around seeing what i have. Stranded wires okay?
30 awg solid core wire is easy to find. Better to wait and purchase the correct wire than to use scraps. They are quite small points you need to solder, so use the right tools. Use the long wire method - don't solder the wiikey in place - I made that mistake. In undoing it, I pulled up one of my pads and had to solder to the legs. It was tricky. I used a microscope to do my soldering which made it easier.
Here's what I did to solder the leg:
1) lightly tin 30awg wire (no big drops of solder)
2) put a small small drop of solder on the iron
3) heat the leg through the small small drop of solder (3-4 seconds)
4) bring in the tinned wire.
5) pull away the soldering iron
6) don't move the wire while it cools!
The legs heat slowly because the grey part of the chip helps to cool the chip that's inside. You're heating the legs which are directly attached to a large heat sink! The heat goes to the leg through the solder! If you don't tin the iron or put a very small drop on it, then the heat doesn't transfer.
