January 13, 2011: Soldering Practice

I had a couple of hours between my day classes and evening class today so I thought I would play around with soldering a bit. I've never done this before, but I watched a couple of YouTube videos a few months ago on the subject, and it seemed pretty straightforward. I started by simply tinning two wires then soldering them together. Then I tinned a couple of larger pads on one of the modem boards, a couple of wires, then soldered the wires to the pads. Tried tinning some more pads (some were pretty ugly lol), then moved on to smaller pads and smaller wires. Here's the carnage:

All in all I think they came out pretty well...didn't have any solder run between pads. C125 looks like it does but it's just a tall tower of solder lol. R2 pads are pretty ugly...those were some of the first ones. Not quite ready to start on the Game Gear yet, I'll probably try to get some more practice in tomorrow afternoon, then maybe a little more on Sunday then go for it. We'll see how confident I'm feeling.

I probably won't update again before Sunday, as we have a party tomorrow night that may well extend late into Saturday evening.

Oh and if any of you have any comments or criticism on my soldering work, go ahead and post 'em on the BBS.

Off to class again...