Hardware Newbie to Soldering//Questions Regarding a Project I hope to do

[Ricken]

Hello! I'm currently in a situation where I cannot use one of my laptops because the charger port is busted. I ordered a replacement part, however, it is not the part I was expecting (although it is what I ordered... I should've looked for assistance from someone fluent in Deutsch, I digress).

So for starters, I am not even sure if the part I have will be compatible. It is made for the same type of voltage/charger as the other charger jack, but the back of it appears to potentially have another prong on the replacement part. I can mod my laptop case to accommodate the size difference if it's otherwise compatible, but I do not know enough about electronics/motherboards to fully make that call; advice would be appreciated.

I also have a very crummy soldering iron; it was once used for plumbing and the tip is thoroughly corroded. I imagine that's part of the struggle I've been experiencing. If anyone could recommend a soldering iron, I would appreciate it, but I can ultimately reference Amazon reviews. I just trust this place more.

Lastly, if I have a competent soldering iron, it should be pretty easy to remove the solder/apply new solder to this project, correct? I see six points and one plastic piece holding everything together, and I imagine the plastic piece will be a lot easier to remove when the solder has been scraped away.
Or, I may be misguided on how I should go about this entirely.

I feel this is a lot to ask, but, I do wish to learn to solder and I would love if I could turn this into a first soldering experience; I wouldn't dare ask similar for a complex project, but as far as I can see, it should be a pretty easy job?

Any input on anything would be appreciated; I feel a bit lost with the tools a friend provided me for this.

 

[skawo]

It's sort of hard to tell from the pictures you made, but it looks like the port is a surface mount component.
That's gonna be really difficult to remove with just a soldering iron - generally you'd resort to hot air for that. You could maybe get away by using a solder wick and a LOT of patience for it, but it's not gonna be very easy, sorry to say.

It appears that the charger port is just a ground and power line, though, so even though it's a different size... it should work.

 

[FAST6191]

I have adapted many laptops (and corresponding chargers) to common/available to me at the time port types over the years.

Existing two pins should have no troubles going to three pins. The third pin is usually used either as an earth (some laptops will be floating. Has some implications in higher end electronics and measurement but I will skip that for today) or as a communications option with the charger (a lot of late core2 and early i? Dell laptops doing it to see if you had a suitable blessed official charger, refusing to charge the battery if a third party replacement was detected and said detection often went wrong).
Get the right pins connected and it is all good -- chances are the negative rail is probably directly wired to nearby USB outer shells so quick resistance measurement and you know what is what.
Depending upon the arrangement of the replacement you might have to solder wires around (push comes to shove then turn it upside down and run wires down it or indeed skip the lot for your setup and go to the ribbon cable rather than trying trace modifications).

Cheap firestarter irons. Mercury irons I have used for years and years. Nice price, very effective, whenever I touch a cheap and nasty one (usually not that much cheaper) I see why so many lifted pads happened for others using them in the wii modding days, whenever I touch a fancy hakko or something one they are nice but not a "oh that is why" moment like I get when handling expensive spanners vs cheap homeowner ones.

As far as desoldering. Get some flux, add some more solder on (better yet some nice leaded solder if you can get some/care to use it) and yeah. If you can snip the old ones off with a nice set of flush trip sidecutters to prevent them acting as heatsinks then do that too.

Can also be helpful to flood with some glue gun/hot snot, though looking at the pictures you might have a flying lead anyway (always nice to have that vs on the motherboard where the destruction of the port might cause greater issues).