Boasting about my soldering skills

[Pixelkitten]

I recently decided to upgrade my mom's computer with the stuff that was left over after I upgraded my own this summer. This did not go without problems, but they are ongoingly chronicled in another place on this forum (here for those who might be interested).

 

Long story short, stuff from 2006 sometimes have trouble fitting into a chassis from 2002. I therefore had to acquire a new chassis and a new PSU.

The chassis didn't come with a front fan, but that didn't bother me because I knew I had an old 120mm gathering dust in my spare parts drawer. Turns out that that fan had an old type of connector, with the conductor nowadays used for speed control missing. It therefore refused to fit on the motherboard.

 

Solution: Find a "new"-type connector and splice it with the fan cable. Not that difficult, found the right connector on a Pentium 2 cartridge (Was the fan really that old?) that my dad had saved because "It might be useful". For once in a while he was actually right about not throwing stuff away. So I cut off that connector, cut off the old connector, and warmed up my soldering iron. Soldering the thin little cables turned out to be harder than expected, but I managed, and on my dads insistence I crimped on lugs on all the cable ends.

 

Just plug the two cables into a screw terminal, install the fan and plug in, right? No, the resulting cable was about an inch too short. I had to splice the cable again.

 

I cut off the remaining cable on the P2 cartridge (which my dad insisted on keeping, despite not having a working fan anymore) and warmed up the soldering iron again. I soldered and put lugs on one end of the new cable, and soldered the other end to the old cable. I had a bit of a hard time getting the solder to stick to the lugs, but it worked out fine in the end. To insulate the soldered splice, I used heat-shrink tubing, which was a bit hard to get on and I had to resolder one cable because the tin had a jag that snagged on the tube. Then I used the soldering iron to shrink the tubing. The end result can be seen here.

 

Finally, after a day of cursing at various things and soldering itty-bitty cables, I could finally install the fan into the computer.

 

PS: Sorry if I'm unclear, it's a bit late and I'm not used to discussing electronics in English. Had to look up half of the names for technical stuff on Wikipedia.

[Starbuck]

Sorry if I'm unclear, it's a bit late and I'm not used to discussing electronics in English.

KenB is the man to talk to about electronics.

Sometimes I think he doesn't speak English either :smile: but don't tell him I said that.

[Plastic Nev]

From the photo, nice and neat heat shrink insulated joints, just as they should be, well done.

 

Nev.

[KenB]

I have just one observation - That bench is far too TIDY !!

 

You do get a sense of achievement when a soldering job works :)

[Pixelkitten]

That bench is far too TIDY !!

 

That's because I don't really have a workbench, just a table in my room that I use for whatever I need to do. I have a desk too, but it is definitely NOT tidy. The stuff on the right of the picture is the stuff that was left behind from assembling the computer, the soldering iron and related equipment is usually stored in that grey case, which in turn is stored in my closet.

 

It's hard to get things un-tidy when you've only had them lying around for a couple of hours. ;)

[KenB]

It's hard to get things un-tidy when you've only had them lying around for a couple of hours.

Not in my house. :)

 

stuff that was left behind from assembling the computer

Isn't it strange - there always seems to be a few bits left over :confused:

[Plastic Nev]

It is when you look at the bits left over and see that one of them is the very important bit, the washer that should have gone in first before anything else, meaning take it all to bits again to put that one in.

Been there and done it with a car gear box many years ago now.

 

Nev.