Is my Circuit Board Fried?

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AOS-

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I really doubt it is, as I've worked with this 100w Soldering gun on 4 circuit boards (3 Playstation 1 controllers and 1 3rd-party Gamecube controller) in the past and all of them work perfectly.

Now just a few days ago I wanted to hack my Nintendo DS Lite so I can add an alternative source to clicking buttons. I wantedto make a peripheral controller and that requires me to solder wires to the signal and ground of the corresponding buttons. Thing is I didn't notice anything different when I tried to apply solder to the contact points. So I dab the solder on those points I figured were the ones I needed (since I tested it for continuity), and jsut to check if everything was stil okay, I put the battery back in and flick the switch. Thing doesn't turn on.

Now it never turns on. I didn't touch anything near the power switch as everything related to it is on the other side of the board.

I was curious if I did something to the battery, even though I already had it out. I had taken the voltmeter and put it on the two battery ends as I was more or less fooling around with the voltmeter. Perhaps that did something?

Anyway, I noticed something strange this morning, I put my DS back together, and when I plugged the charger in, the orange light goes on (so something must still be working), but a second later the light goes off. I take it out and plufg it back in and it does that again. When the orange light turns off like that, it means it's fully charged? If that's the case, that's strange as I've been using it for well over 4 hours prior to the previous charge.

Anyone got a clue what might have happened? Or rather, how can you tell if the circuitry is fried?
 
Get an ampeter at check where the current is going, you could have just blocked a connection accidentally, also did you ground yourself to avoid static (thats something we learnt in electronics I don't really know the actual risks).

You allready seem pretty clued up on electronics so I quess it will be quite difficult to find stuff you don't know/ havent tried.
 
The location of something on the circuit board doean't mean it's not affected by what you did.

Another issue is that some circuit boards are multi-layered; there's not just this side and the other side, there may be another layer or two or three sandwiched in there. You start melting solder and who knows what happens?

And . . . 100 watts is way the %$#& too much heat for a circuit board with microelectronics on it.

As for how you can tell if it's fried . . . . Generally, if it don't work no more, it's fried. Sorry.
 
Do you have a wireing diagram for the Nintendo DSi?

Plus i do take it the 100w soldering iron has a dial to adjust the heat.

Try adding another power source to the unit.
 
I'm aware 100w is way too high. but it hasn't failed me before, so I'm leaving this out as a possible reason for the time being (but not ignoring it completely).

I don't have a wiring diagram for the DSi, it's a DS Lite, but I did take pictures.

http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/2673/dspcbface.jpg
http://img690.imageshack.us/img690/8821/dspcbpower.jpg


besides the contact pads, I did also put solder on a few of the random points (holes in the board with exposed copper), which wasn't connected or bridged to anything else.

I got a scourer from work last night and was hoping it could remove solder from the PCB... yeah, couldn't do it. I wwas heating up the solder with the gun, then was going to run the scourer across real fastto wipe it off while it was still melted, but it just solidifies as soon as the gun no longer makes contact.
 
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The browning does not look good on the first picture, could you take a clearer picture of the power area near P12?.

Try heating the solder a little then using a solder sucker to remove the solder.
 
The browning you're looking at is flux....I wiped that all off.

..and no the camera I have doesn't get any clearer... terrible macro and the film destroying image data has become a recent issue with this camera now. It doesn't show up on the little LCD screen of his, but it appear when I open the image on computer.Just curious, are you on to something at P12? It's jsut a wire that's connected to something, that part hasn't been touched.

and about the static thing, No idea if I was carrying any, but I sat down on a chair if that counts. :dunce: I might have sent some static through it, is there a way to know or remove the static?
 
All those random holes with exposed copper but "not connected?" Have a look at what I posted earlier about layers and see if you can think of why those might exist . . . . .

This isn't quite the same scale as dumping NOS energy drink into a motorcycle thinking it's a fuel additive, or drilling through your ECU to mount an auxiliary bracket, or designing a way of dumping exhaust into your intake for infinite power, but it's starting to get there . . . .
 
is there a way to know or remove the static?

You can't remove static from PCBs, when you give off a static discharge the voltage may be 1,000v easy and it is not made to carry that kind of voltage, if you did have a static discharge it would have fried something to do with power.
 
Sigh.........I've already made a deal with someone for his DS. This time I'm not going to do anything different than the first controller I've hacked, by soldering on the contact pad itself.. Will definitely hinder a few buttons, but I never hit them anyway. Now that I got a scourer I'll use that crappy soldering iron which is probably 5W
 
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