Hello! I've been chipping PS2's (Among other consoles) for about six or seven years and up until now I was just lurking. Here's a few pictures, some come out better than others.
That is some very nice soldering and cable management. I know the PS2 is one of the harder consoles to mod.
I guess you'll be our new tiny soldering guy
That is some very nice soldering and cable management. I know the PS2 is one of the harder consoles to mod.
I guess you'll be our new tiny soldering guy
Yes of course! I learned how to solder by doing the PS2 because somebody (I think it was Jinn) said if you can do the PS2 you can do anything else. It took a while to get it right, but the only way to learn was to butcher one console after another until it works consistently. I even broke the PS2 that I had for like 10 years in the process. I have never been able to chip an scph-79000 or a 90000 for anybody because I'm not confident about the A/B/G/H/I wires, they're ridiculously small, those points in the picture are all 30awg wire but the 79000/90000 requires 34 for those four or five points. Anyways to make a long story short, I can do everything from the PS1 to the 360. Not including the PS3, the opportunity to solder one never came up.
I think I might be able to mod a PS2 after having to do trace repair on a board i was working on but... I wouldn't exactly feel confident. Not without way better equipment at least. Me and dad had his PS2 opened once because he was going to install a modchip in it but once he saw the size of the solder points he quickly changed his mind, and I can't blame him. He did install a drivechip in my Wii without much trouble though so he can solder and might have been able to do it just fine, it just looked crazy difficult.
It's easier than you think. All I use is a 15w iron (hakko fx-650) with a helping hands magnifier, an old jar of flux from radio shack, and three different brands of solder (a thin one and two thicker ones). The helping hands makes it a lot easier. One of my secret techniques is to scratch any points that have a copper coating so the solder will adhere to it, don't even need flux.
Having tried to solder without flux I can say that even if it's not strictly needed it's certainly recommended. Just makes it way easier.
I do have all of those things (well only one type of soldering tin but it's served me well), though my iron is some cheap 30W one and I find even that is not quite enough power as it makes desoldering stuff with desoldering braid tricky.
Oh definitely, it's also great for undoing mistakes! If you bridge two points and can't get it off, a drop of flux with a quick swipe fixes everything. Wouldn't recommend 30 watts though, 12-15 gives much more time to work on a point without frying a resistor. Soldering tin and flux are two things you can't cheapen out on, I've tried various brands from china and none of them were any good. But the wire itself, very cheap on aliexpress. I've tried desoldering braid, never worked as good as flux.
Last edited by rsx,
Yup, I usually use the swipe method, but sometimes you need to remove solder for whatever reason (too much solder, or you're trying to desolder a component with more than 2 legs, or replacing it with leaded solder... that sort of thing)
The flux I got is some amtech stuff but it's probably a Chinese knockoff. Wasn't easy to find the real stuff online without paying crazy amounts in shipping and to my knowledge real Amtech is not "made in China" nor do they have suppliers in China so it would not make sense that all these Chinese sellers were selling real Amtech. Though the price seemed right. Has been working fine though.
The braid is just some stuff I bought locally so I have no idea about the quality. But still having more luck with that than a desoldering pump which never seems to actually suck up the solder... Ordered a different one online so I'll see if that one is any better.
D
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Nice wire routing
All you need is a lil more flux and get those points nice, round and shiny
Welcome to the Temp
These joints on the huge ground plane at the bottom look dry to me. A 15W plug-into-wall-and-go fire stick just can't do it. Wattage doesn't tell you anything about how dangerous an iron is to components. It's a common myth that low power irons are better for the components when in reality it's a mix of temperature and time. Hot and as fast as possible is generally a good strategy because less chance of ripping pads off.
Iwould recommend a soldering station like the T12 ones from china. You never want to use anything else after you tried a properly temperature controlled station. And the hakko clone tips are extremely cheap (you can also use original tips which will definitely last longer).
Iwould recommend a soldering station like the T12 ones from china. You never want to use anything else after you tried a properly temperature controlled station. And the hakko clone tips are extremely cheap (you can also use original tips which will definitely last longer).
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