Flashjazzcat's Blog - A Year in Soldering

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Having just about finished my "primary" machine, I stare at the mess of wires and think just how much I've learned over the past twelve months...

 

This time last year, I'd never used a soldering iron before. The 128K upgrade in my original 65XE was fitted by my father in the early nineties. His eyesight was poor, his glasses thick, and he did the whole job on the dining room table with a jeweller's eyeglass strapped over the right lens of his spectacles. The first soldering job I ever did was the minimal work required to boost that extra 64K up to 256K. The "Peterson" upgrade worked perfectly, and I was hooked.

 

Next up was an extra 512KB in my newly acquired 520STFM. I had a couple of failed test runs before buying a 15W Antex iron, not unlike the one my dad used to use:

 

 

 

It took a couple of extra passes with the iron to get that one working, but you couldn't buy the satisfaction I felt when the extra memory was detected. Clearly I had discovered a new hobby at the age of thirty-six. Moreover, I was getting pretty good at soldering.

 

Next up, it was time for something a little more ambitious: desoldering. My first attempts (a Supervideo mod on my 65XE) were appalling: lifted traces and bent resistors. But my first INTSDX board required removal of the OS ROM, and once I got that off, anything was possible:

 

 

 

Sadly, the spot where that adapter board once lived is now a barren wasteland of lifted traces and scorched holes. I removed the unit to transfer to another machine, but the desoldering job was so arduous, both the motherboard and adapter sustained damage. The mainboard will be fixed at length, but I needed the INTSDX module to work. I had a plain PCB, so I decided to make my own from components desoldered from the damaged unit.

 

Only yesterday did I finally get to test it in my VBXE machine, and it worked perfectly. I'd made a better job of the surface mounted ICs and resistors that I'd thought. If only the wiring was tidier:

 

 

 

How things work - previously a mystery - will hopefully become clearer as I begin tentative and very basic study of circuit design theory. I have a friend who's pretty good at explaining things. I figure the only thing more satisfying than putting one of these upgrades together is designing your own from scratch. I only hope I can make as much progress over the next twelve months.

 

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