It’s alive Igor! It’s alive!
Last friday, Alconqor gave me his broken usb headset and said that if I can fix it, it’s mine to keep. The only thing that was broken was the usb port itself as the pins seem to have been torn off and one was missing. I decided that it was a doable project since I had an old usb stick that no longer works.
So this is what it looks before I started. Headset on the left, usb stick in the middle, soldering iron on the right. Desoldering vacuum at the top middle, solder right next to it, then triangular file and a carving knife to the right. (Yeah, I know my computer desk is messy but it’s organized chaos and I know where everything is)
First thing I did was remove the old retaining pins that got left behind on the headset. That didn’t give me problems at all.
Next, I removed the pins connected to the usb stick’s board. This took me a while since I had to carefully pry them off the board.
A few burned fingers later, I started removing the actual usb port from the memory stick. Please note that these things (the usb port and the board itself) get hot as hell. I learned that the hard way. This was quite tricky as I had to remove it little by little. It doesn’t help when the solder cools quickly (within a few milli seconds) after removing the iron. Once I got it out, I removed the excess solder with the desoldering vacuum.
Next, I carefully fit the usb port onto the headset’s board to make sure everything fits. no problem there.
One thing I should note is that I did not remove the data pins from the headset’s board because these went from the top layer down to the other side while the usb stick’s pins were only connected at the top. I figured I’d just connect them and then solder them.
Satisfied that they all fit, I started soldering them together, removing excess solder as I went. Again, it was tricky because it got hot as hell to hold. And of course, it didn’t occur to me to put on some sort of heat resistant gloves until I started writing this up.
This is the end result. I’m quite satisfied with how it turned out. As you can see, the usb connector on the usb stick is now on the headset’s board. I decided to test it out and it works perfectly. All that’s left is to super glue the casing but I’ll do that after I show Alconqor the end result. Oh right, that can of coke is empty. I used it as a repository for the excess solder.
Parts used:
- Soldering Iron
- Desoldering vacuum
- Solder
- Non-working usb stick
- Logitech usb headset (model unknown)
- Triangular file
- Carving knife
Impressive.