siliconchip.com.au Australia’s electronics magazine April 2019 55
stuff like this in the past, and at the risk
of being labelled a man who blames
his tools, I blame my lack of proper
SMD desoldering tools – and the tal-
ent to make the best use of the ones I
do have. If this was my motherboard,
I’d likely have a go, but for a paying
customer, I draw the line.
Removing an 8-pin SMD is one
thing, taking off a bonded 40-pin sock-
et like this is another game entirely, es-
pecially when it is on a tightly-packed
motherboard.
So I thought I’d check it under a mi-
croscope before deciding what to do
next. I could see that all the legs were
still securely soldered and nothing was
really out of place, except for the mis-
alignment of the now-separated hard
resin body of the socket.
The crack went right through it, and
if I pressed in the right places using
some repurposed dental tools, I could
close the crack right up and straight-
en the socket, likely enough to put
the plug back onto it. But as soon as
I released the pressure on it, it would
open up again.
I made a vague attempt to close the
socket and while holding it closed,
replace the plug with my third hand,
but while it did close with a bit of
pressure, it wouldn’t hold, and with-
out some extra tweaking I knew this
wasn’t going to fly.
Back under the microscope, I could
see the majority of the socket’s pins
were still straight, with only a couple
on each side adjacent to the crack it-
self bent out of line.
All the pins were holding the two
halves of the socket tightly, if apart.
I reckoned that if I could straighten
those bent pins, this would relieve the
stress holding the break open, and it
would let me get some glue in there
to close the crack.
I would then just need to hold it
long enough for the glue to cure, and
in theory, I would be able to re-connect
the plug and it “should” work. That’s
a whole lot of “ifs” though...
The biggest problem I faced is that
one drop of glue in the wrong place
and I’d be right in the litter box; the
connector would never go back onto
the socket and if it did, the chances are
that one or more pins wouldn’t make
proper contact.
Considering the size of the compo-
nent, and the consistency of most of
the glues I have access to that could
bond this type of resin with any
strength, I would have trouble getting
enough glue into the crack without
spilling any over into the surround-
ing areas. I would also only get one
shot with this method and if it didn’t
work, it would be game over.
After much wringing of hands and
gnashing of teeth, I considered my
only feasible option would be to jug-
gle things enough so I could dry-fit
the plug to the socket, make sure it