MCWILL Game Gear Help

[Backswampcub]

   I was finishing up the install of the mcwill screen in my Single Asic Game Gear when diasaster struck. The jumper wire from R23 to Test pad T10 caused the T10 pad to come off of the board.  Now there is no where to solder this jumper too plus I don't know what other circuits have been interupted by the pad coming free.  Is there a way to bypass this pad to another location or am I going to start with another board. I have already replaced all the capacitors on this board. 

[+-^CrossBow^-]

T10 connects directly to the main IC in the system. While the schematics are fuzzy, it looks like pin 40 on the large IC 315-5536. So if you can locate that pin, see if there might be other places along the trace from it with possible places to attach.

[gamegrid2084]

It is indeed connected to pin 40. The schematic (and a quick scrub on the board I'm currently working on) doesn't seem to show that it connects anywhere else. I also had this happen (loss of the T10 pad). I ended up soldering it directly to pin 40 and everything worked fine. It does not appear to affect any other circuit (at least when doing a McWill mod). You may have a little alternative if you only lost the T10 pad. You could carefully scrape off the green soldermask above the remaining trace from T10 to pin 40 and you might have an easier time soldering the wire to that exposed trace.

 

[nyandeyanen]

On 2/4/2021 at 10:18 AM, Backswampcub said:

screen in my Single Asic Game Gear when diasaster struck. The jumper wire from R23 to Test pad T10 caused the T10 pad to come off of the board.  Now there is

I had one come off when I started doing GG McWill installs and had much less practice/gear, at the time I soldered a wire directly to the chip's pin from the bottom of R23. You'll want to be very careful since if you damage the chip it's game over for the GG. The best bet is to cover the pins on either side and maybe the top of the chip with kaptan tape to avoid bridging or damaging anything, and definitely do the work under magnification and a very clean soldering tip, as small as you have. FWIW, all this particular connection does is enable the correct resolution for SMS titles (and the Game Gear titles which are actually SMS titles) but it's worth the tiny bit of wire.