I looked up the tutorial for the EX2 mod and it seemed easy enough for someone with no soldering experience. Plus, it’s also something I wanted to get into (want LEDS in my 360 controller too). The results didn’t turn out too good though and I think I might have screwed up the PCB.
When I was desoldering, I burned off the metal contacts by accident. All thanks to my solder vaccum constantly jumping up when I hit the button. I definently should have used a braid instead. Then I had to cut the connectors from the buttons in half to fit (should’ve just used wires to solder them on…) and now none of the buttons work when soldered on (probably because the contacts and PCB are burned and the connectors don’t properly/barely fit through the holes). Awesome.
I have a picture to show the current state and I also went ahead and just scraped off the hanging contacts. Is there any way to salvage and fix this? Possibly reapply the metal contacts? I spent a lot of money on this ($160 total… enough for a TE stick) and would hate to have to throw this all away.
You could solder the buttons directly to the ribbon cable. I see it has 8 wires, 2 per button. You could just bypass the PCB completely, and solder to those wires (or instead solder the buttons to wherever the other ends of the wires go). Just follow the little traces on the PCB back so you know which should be wired to each button, and you’re good to go.
Alright, I think I can do that then. Gotta gameplay question though. If I do use a wire, do you think there would be a input delay with the button whenever I hit it? Also what type of wire should I use? Gonna pick it up from RadioShack ASAP.
