[JiPi]

Hello,

It's the first time I post in this forum. I didn't really know of any other place where I could ask this sort of question, so I decided here was a good place.

So here's my problem : I want to make an external charger for my iPod (I'm going on a very long bus trip) and in order to do that, I need a FireWire plug (female). Now there is one on my FireWire card which I am not using (the one that is on the card, in the back, used for front panel connections) and I would like to remove that one. I never done anything like that, but from looking at it, I'm thinking it shouldn't be so hard. But I don't want to destroy my card doing that... So has anybody done such a thing with their computer parts? What do you suggest?

BTW, from what I could see, it seems to be held down to the card (the green thing) by five little spikes, which are welded on the other side of the card.

Here's an example of a battery pack :

 

[Paragon]

Simple. All you need is a soldering iron [hand held around 25W], some desoldering braid [with flux], a little bit of solder, and some wire cutters[ for reviving the braid]. You use a bit of new solder to help remelt the old solder and suck it away with the braid. You can also use some stranded wire instead of the braid, but braid is better.

The main thing is to not heat the connector too much. You only want to melt the solder to suck it away. I have also removed parts without the use of any braid or anything just my melting one point and rocking the part out of the hole then working on the next point.

 

[JiPi]

So I just heat the 'spikes' under the card (the point where the little sticks attached to the part I want to remove are soldered) and then gently rock it back and forth until it comes off?

Good.. You don't think it will break the card, eh? In other words, just removing that part won't make the rest of the card useless, right?

 

[Paragon]

You should not have to put force on it to remove it and even then, chances are you won't break the card. Rememebr, small part, small force. If you do need a lot of force, there is more that you need to do before it can be taken out. For what you are doing, I would first apply heat to a single solder joint and if it does not melt, touch a small bit of new solder to it [very little, no drowning of the joint] and that sometimes helps to remelt solder. Take a length of bare gopper wire with flux on it and swipe it across the joing to remove as much solder as you can. Repeat for other joints. You will get to the point where there is very little solder holding the tabs so that is when I would go around heating and gently rocking the part out.

You do not need a lot of heat to do this, just enough to melt the solder with the help of new solder otherwise you will melt more than the solder. Some people use as little as 15W irons. A lot of people use a 25W Weller here, for example.

<> I had an old CDROM that I took apart and started to desolder a lot of the parts off the board for another project [like molex connectors and whatnot]

Don't use a soldering gun as they are generally way overpowered for PCB work