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UK diy (uk.d-i-y) For the discussion of all topics related to diy (do-it-yourself) in the UK. All levels of experience and proficency are welcome to join in to ask questions or offer solutions. |
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Solder rot
My Christmas present to the children was a Commodore 64.
I picked it up a couple of months ago, and ran it for several hours to test it; it was all fine. On Christmas Eve I tested it again; after a few minutes it would start throwing junk all over the display and then lock up, and I realised that the difference was the house at room temperature where it crashed, and the much cooler garage where it wouldn't. We've repaired it now (mostly), by resoldering many of the pins on the PCB where the solder seemed to have developed holes. I've never noticed this phenomenon before, even in much older equipment. I assume that it wasn't like that after manufacture. What causes it? Presumably, a 30-year-old computer would have had proper lead solder, not this tin-whiskery lead-free stuff. Actually it can't have been the soldering alone that fixed it because it continued to crash; I also used a hot air gun to try to identify the component that was failing after warming - I only once managed to get that to trigger the fault, but since then, it hasn't crashed again. So the crashing is fixed, but the next thing to tackle is the sound output, which is barely audible. Anyway, the children have been happily playing The Hobbit and Attack of the Mutant Camels from tapes that have been sitting in boxes for nearly three decades, which isn't bad going. Daniele |
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