Desoldering 8-pin bios chip off of HDD PCB??

[lonely_sata_cable]

ohh k so ive been trying to do a bios swap on a 2060-800039-p1 and im having trouble getting the bios chip off. personally i dont own a solder iron but the school IT department does and theve been very kind enough to let my me use it anytime i need to. point is im very new to soldering and have only really seen videos and how tos of how to desolder these 8-pin chip. so i ask, is there anyone hear that knows how to desolder, equpiment i have it solder iron, desolder copper braid, of course solder and some weird looking grey colored flux. Im no professional by any means but is this right. oh and it smells like cigarette smoke whenever it melts??? IDK, but is the any tips or tricks anyone could lend me. is there anything i need to buy. (keep it simple tho i cant afford those heat gun things). and ill post pictures in a few minutes of the PCB's and the flux jar. or anything else yall want to see ig

[ELSknutson]

it seems like you should have what you need just be careful that you dont heat up other components near the chip.  Make sure the soldering Iron has a good tip and is not all gummed up. but for the most part soldering is pretty easy. 

[SupaKomputa]

Yeah it's doable, only 8 (big) legs. You can use the solder iron to desolder, but to have it nice and tidy a heatgun is best.

You need 3 tools at least, a solder iron / heatgun, solder sucking tool (i dont know the name) and a tweezer.
If you use heatgun have a flux ready and some metal foil to stop the heat reaching other component.

Heat the legs until melting temperature, suck the melted solder if any, do it one at a time each legs.

 

This guy use nothing but heatgun

 

[Master Disaster]

The general process when desoldering is...

 

Apply some fresh solder to the old joints (only really required for old solder but won't hurt anyway)

If you're using solder wick place the wick over the joint

Place your iron over the wick to melt the solder

Do one joint at a time moving to a fresh piece of wick for each joint

You should ask if they have a vacuum desolderer available, if not they should at least have one of the spring loaded ones. Using a desolderer makes things much easier.

 

I STRONGLY recommend you don't try to desolder a motherboard for your first attempt. Even if you get the chip out without damaging anything you've still got to get the replacement back in afterwards. Certainly don't try it on anything you would be upset to lose.

 

[SupaKomputa]

This is a pretty simple procedure, why don't you hand it over to someone with the skills.

Anyone familiar with heatgun can do it quickly. Give him $10.

[Master Disaster]

1 minute ago, SupaKomputa said:

Yeah it's doable, only 8 (big) legs. You can use the solder iron to desolder, but to have it nice and tidy a heatgun is best.

You need 3 tools at least, a solder iron / heatgun, solder sucking tool (i dont know the name) and a tweezer.
If you use heatgun have a flux ready and some metal foil to stop the heat reaching other component.

Heat the legs until melting temperature, suck the melted solder if any, do it one at a time each legs.

 

This guy use nothing but heatgun

 

Heat guns are generally only used for surface mount components, if it has legs then use an iron or desolderer as there's much less chance of damaging surrounding components.

[FanielDanara]

One thing that I haven't seen mentioned yet is to be sure you're using enough heat and not forcefully pulling the chip off. If you don't heat up the chip and the PCB enough you could rip up the pads and that's a whole different mess I don't think you want to deal with.

[simson0606]

apply some fresh solder to the legs of the bios chip, grab the chip with a pair of tweezers, apply heat to 1 side of pins and lift that side with the tweezers (carefully, don't rip them off). Repeat for the other side.

 

this how i did it a couple of years ago. (although with a soldering iron which was capable of heating a whole row of legs)

[bob345]

The proper way to do this would be to use a hot air station to reflow the solder at which point the part can easily be picked off the pcb. I would not recommend using an iron to remove any surface mount components as the small pads can easily be damaged or lifted. Hot air reflow is the only way to do it right IMO.

[WereCatf]

30 minutes ago, bob345 said:

The proper way to do this would be to use a hot air station to reflow the solder at which point the part can easily be picked off the pcb. I would not recommend using an iron to remove any surface mount components as the small pads can easily be damaged or lifted. Hot air reflow is the only way to do it right IMO.

It's the easy way of doing it, too! Just cover any adjacent parts with some kapton-tape and go to town with the hot air! With 0102-size components it tends to be a little trickier because they like to fly off even just from looking in their general direction, but SOP-8 - chips are easy as pie with hot air.

[lonely_sata_cable]

16 hours ago, Pangea2017 said:

Fresh solder and solder wick is good enough for most jobs. If it is more difficult it might be worth to look around for special "solder" which stays liquid at lower temperatures like chip quick.

Soldering the new chip in is straight forward. Apply solder and the surface tension will do the rest. If you bridged pins drag it a bit a away from the chip with the soldering tip or use solder wick.

 

16 hours ago, simson0606 said:

apply some fresh solder to the legs of the bios chip, grab the chip with a pair of tweezers, apply heat to 1 side of pins and lift that side with the tweezers (carefully, don't rip them off). Repeat for the other side.

 

this how i did it a couple of years ago. (although with a soldering iron which was capable of heating a whole row of legs)

 

16 hours ago, SupaKomputa said:

This is a pretty simple procedure, why don't you hand it over to someone with the skills.

Anyone familiar with heatgun can do it quickly. Give him $10.

 

16 hours ago, FanielDanara said:

One thing that I haven't seen mentioned yet is to be sure you're using enough heat and not forcefully pulling the chip off. If you don't heat up the chip and the PCB enough you could rip up the pads and that's a whole different mess I don't think you want to deal with.

 

16 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

The general process when desoldering is...

 

Apply some fresh solder to the old joints (only really required for old solder but won't hurt anyway)

If you're using solder wick place the wick over the joint

Place your iron over the wick to melt the solder

Do one joint at a time moving to a fresh piece of wick for each joint

You should ask if they have a vacuum desolderer available, if not they should at least have one of the spring loaded ones. Using a desolderer makes things much easier.

 

I STRONGLY recommend you don't try to desolder a motherboard for your first attempt. Even if you get the chip out without damaging anything you've still got to get the replacement back in afterwards. Certainly don't try it on anything you would be upset to 

The only heat gun i could get my hands on is on from an auto tech shop, its a big Milwaukee heat gun idk any specifications because ive only seen it once but i talked to that teacher and he said i could use uf i needed it, but i feel like this dude could melt everything.

 

I quoted the dude saying just bring it to a shop. Yea imma do that is i dont make any progress tomorrow for ive competitions coming up and my rig has been down for to danm long, not to mention i wanna play some games.

 

I sent a link to this thread to my computer technician teacher and the IT lady and both of them loved everyones advice saying it was pretty sound and just because you didnt get quored doesnt mean anything, i only picked these because i felt these help me out more or was more descriptive or there was like another post saying generally the same thing.

 

[Unimportant]

19 hours ago, lonely_sata_cable said:

ohh k so ive been trying to do a bios swap on a 2060-800039-p1 and im having trouble getting the bios chip off. personally i dont own a solder iron but the school IT department does and theve been very kind enough to let my me use it anytime i need to. point is im very new to soldering and have only really seen videos and how tos of how to desolder these 8-pin chip. so i ask, is there anyone hear that knows how to desolder, equpiment i have it solder iron, desolder copper braid, of course solder and some weird looking grey colored flux. Im no professional by any means but is this right. oh and it smells like cigarette smoke whenever it melts??? IDK, but is the any tips or tricks anyone could lend me. is there anything i need to buy. (keep it simple tho i cant afford those heat gun things). and ill post pictures in a few minutes of the PCB's and the flux jar. or anything else yall want to see ig

The safe (for your PCB), poor man's way of replacing a SO device with only a plain soldering iron is to sacrifice the old chip. Use small snips (or a xacto knife) to carefully cut the chip's pins at the point where they enter the chip's body. Then the chip will fall straight off (If it does not, the body is glued the PCB, in that case try heating the chip's body with your soldering iron and use a little force) and then you can desolder the pins one by one.

 

Putting on the new device is simple after that.

[lonely_sata_cable]

2 hours ago, Unimportant said:

The safe (for your PCB), poor man's way of replacing a SO device with only a plain soldering iron is to sacrifice the old chip. Use small snips (or a xacto knife) to carefully cut the chip's pins at the point where they enter the chip's body. Then the chip will fall straight off (If it does not, the body is glued the PCB, in that case try heating the chip's body with your soldering iron and use a little force) and then you can desolder the pins one by one.

 

Putting on the new device is simple after that.

Dang, i never tought about that!!!! Thats actually not a bad idea. So i think imma definitely try that if i cant get it

[Master Disaster]

6 minutes ago, lonely_sata_cable said:

Dang, i never tought about that!!!! Thats actually not a bad idea. So i think imma definitely try that if i cant get it

Please don't try that on surface mount components though otherwise you'll be dealing with scratched traces too.

[lonely_sata_cable]

1 hour ago, Master Disaster said:

Please don't try that on surface mount components though otherwise you'll be dealing with scratched traces too.

The board on the left is the broken board with a good bios chip and the board on the right has the useless bios chip. That being said, on the bad board could i cut towards the bottom of the 8-pin bios legs to remove the good bios chip. Then on the new board cut the pins closer to the actual chip rather than closer to the board?

 

Or is this still a no go.

[Master Disaster]

Those look fine to cut off.

[lonely_sata_cable]

6 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Those look fine to cut off.

Oh ok cool, sorry just trying to have a game plan. Would hate to lose my data

[lonely_sata_cable]

4 minutes ago, James Evens said:

You can if you like exiting repairs.

Better use the "automotive" heatgun and just heat up the entire board. Gravity or a pair of tweezers will allow you to remove the new bios chip without damaging it.

actually, im working on it right now. i already cut both bois chips of and im 3 legs into soldering the new chip on