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lazart's Avatar
Posts: 99 | Thanked: 64 times | Joined on Jun 2009 @ Stuttgart/Germany
#109
Originally Posted by gebeleysis View Post
Hi All!

1. How did you remove the metal shield that restricts access to the microUSB pins? Even if you unsolder part of it, there's no way to get behind it - between two adjacent shields.

I used a small side-cutter, it looked pretty bad after that.

2. What soldering iron did you use? Brand and power. (as mentioned, I've tried a 15W Toolcraft with needle tip but it's still too damn fat to fit between USB and shielding and too damn cold (I guess) to solder surface-mounted contacts).

(mostly unknown brand) 50W with adjustable temperature.

3. What tip did the soldering iron have? I've seen someone here showing a jig made out of wire that he got around his usual soldering iron tip. I tried something similar (by holding a regular sewing needle attached to the iron tip) but the heat transfer was awful.

A friend of mine grinded a regular to a smaller tip. But there are special ones for SMD.

4. As a far fetched alternative, I'm also thinking of buying a used n900, hopefully with a damaged screen. Since I can't back up the phone the usual way, might it be possible to unsolder it's internal MMC and swap it into another phone?
4. sounds good I spent many hours trying to repair the usb socket. The only thing I got to work was temporary connect an usb cable directly to the pads, because I had to do a reflash. IMHO repairing the micro usb socket only makes sense if you still have the intact pads on your board.
After my first n900, which I failed to repair (I used a wall wart charger + second battery for a long time), didn't boot anymore, I bought a "new" one with a broken display from an online auction. Because the display from my first one was OK, I replaced it with the broken display from the second one. And there I was: A full functional N900!!
I also hoped to swap the internal memory, but failed, it's soldered on pads _under_ the chip.. whatever.

and it's worth to make backups with the backup function of the device on a small microsd card..

good luck!
 

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