Question Desoldering Issues

[DTronics]

So I was trying to desolder the gamecube ports off of my wii with no success can anyone suggest a effective method.(Btw I'm using a soldering iron and a solder sucker)

 

[jefflongo]

Why do you want to desolder the ports? The best way to use the GC ports is to just trim off the piece of the board that has the ports on them. If you do this you will preserve at minimum the GND connections and if you make the trim slightly larger you can preserve the 5v and 3.3v connections as well. If you desolder the ports, you will have to apply these signals to every port instead of just one. However if you insist on desoldering the port you could do it by either a hot air station or desolder braid.

 

[DTronics]

My reasoning behind was that I have no intention of doing a omgwtf trim and I intend to just use the board without the ports as I intend to make a wii laptop and aren't very confident with my skill so I decided to do something basic first. Unless doing it like this causes it to be more confusing?

 

[KaptainTape]

I see you are trying to make a Wii laptop! Very good.

Might I suggest keeping the ports on the board intact and placing them on the side of your laptop casing to gain access to them for multiplayer capabilities? You could even cut the trace for data on the player 1 port and solder a switch to change between on-board and external controls.

 

[Shank]

If you are really struggling to get them off, I think you would be better off trying to get a hold of an RVK board from a family edition Wii. The board is essentially the exact same, but it just doesn't have any GameCube ports soldered onto the pads

 

[DTronics]

I see you are trying to make a Wii laptop! Very good.

Might I suggest keeping the ports on the board intact and placing them on the side of your laptop casing to gain access to them for multiplayer capabilities? You could even cut the trace for data on the player 1 port and solder a switch to change between on-board and external controls.

Oh by ports I meant the gamecube memory card port not the controller ports sorry if I caused any misunderstanding.

 

[jefflongo]

Oh by ports I meant the gamecube memory card port not the controller ports sorry if I caused any misunderstanding.

In that case, I tend to just cut them out with flush cutters. My strategy is as follows:

• Cut the support pins on the back and sides
• You should now be able to lift the shielding up, exposing the pins
• Cut as many pins as you can
• After enough pins are cut you should be able to just bend the port until you can see the pins you couldn't reach
• Cut those pins too and the port should break off

Not the cleanest way to remove the port but it works every time for me without damaging the board and is a hell of a lot easier than desoldering it.

 

[DTronics]

Thank you so much I was struggling way too much with desoldering it

 

[jefflongo]

Also let me suggest that you don't cut the pins all the way down to the board, leave some length on them so after you remove the port you can cleanly heat the through hole while holding on to the pins with tweezers and just pull them out

 

[Cradiak]

I used a solder sucker plunger to get the majority of the solder off, and then I used a hot air rework station to heat up the board. Then I was able to remove it easily. I guess technically you wouldn't have to even use the solder sucker if you use hot air, but I did. You just have to be patient and move the air gun back and forth so all the pins heat up together so you can remove the port when the solder melts. The tip I use on my hot air gun is about the diameter of a pencil. Don't want to use one that's too wide. Make sure you cover any components that are nearby so they don't fall off or shift. I covered the surrounding area with kapton tape.