From: Isaac (Newton_at_spymac.com)
Date: Thu Jul 08 2004 - 14:09:25 PDT
> Ermm... I hate doing this, but...
>
> Updating a 2000 requires unsoldering two memory chips from the
> mainboard and soldering two new chips to the mainboard. Said chips
> have pins that are so close together that even with reasonably good
> soldering equipment you don't have a chance. You'd need special
> equipment to unsolder and resolder SMD components, and you
> need the experience and skill to use it. At the moment I do
> not offer this upgrade because I'm lacking
> the required soldering equipment. If anybody out there has
> a hot air soldering station he wants to get rid of...
> And yes, I have installed many SER001s. This is really easy.
> But upgrading a 2000 mainboard is not.
What???
I did have a MP2000 and a MP2100 and IŽve swapped the RAM boards and voila,
the result was as expected. If one has change memory chips as pointed out by
Frank then it is clearly more difficult. However, if you were working with
SMD youŽll probably be able to unsolder chips even w/o hot air gun. IŽve
used a bigger soldering iron w/ about 100W and put a big blob of solder onto
each row of pins. If all is heated up and melted you have only to turn the
PCB quickly and the SMD will fall off. This worked very well for SMDŽs up to
2x 24 and even for 4x8. ThereŽs a danger that the unsoldered SMD is damaged
by heat if you took to long but between 5 to maximum 8s should be okay (see
the data sheets for what soldering time is specified). To short soldering
time is bad as well. Heating up a soldering joint for less than 2s will
produce unreliable contacts because the hot tin cannot diffund into the PCB
pad surface.
The next hurdle is to be shure that there are no tin shorts between the
pins. The best bet is to use enough flux and solder removal stranded wire.
And finally washing the PCB in an ultrasonic bath with alcohol is sort of
mandatory.
Marco
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