I may have damaged my Fight Stick Pro PCB

Hey SRK, I done goofed. I tried to solder on a new usb cable to my SFxT TE and things went south. Here are some pics!
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[/details] At first, I clipped the old cable and tried to remove the wires by heating up the solder on the under side of the PCB. when the cables wouldn’t come off, I tried soldering the new USB cable to the left over wire from the old one. That didn’t work, so I attached the new USB cable to the underside of the PCB. Now at the end of my fruitless endeavor the arcade stick still isn’t working, and I fear I may have damaged it beyond repair.

Is there any way to fix this? or will I have to get a new PCB?

Thanks Guys

That doesn’t looks like a clean solder job and, from what I see, there might be possible shorts in it.

What are the symptoms you are experiencing? Please expound upon how it is not working.

You can clean it up with Flux and a copper wick. Clip the connected end off and strip/tin some new tips. Stop connecting it to your console until you are sure all of the new joints are in place and free of shorts. Crossing the 5v with the data - or + will fry your board but it doesn’t look like that has happened yet.

Sorry for not being more clear earlier

On the orginal usb cable the part that connects to the end adapter was damaged. the cord itself also had a tear, so I decide to swap the USB cable for an extra I had. Before attempting to change the usb cable, the stick would not power on or be recognized by a 360 or pc. Now after, the same problem still persists. I took note of which color wire connected to which slot, and made sure they were placed correctly.

As people have already mentioned, that soldering is really bad. If you are unable to clean it up and do it again neatly then get someone more experienced to do it for you… before you cause permanent damage.

I find it hard to believe that you fried the board, just from looking at it, but this is a perfect example of where a multimeter really helps out.

If you have a multimeter, or can get your hands on one, first test the cable to see if the colors correlate properly with the male USB-A connector on the end. It might be hard to believe that it happens, not all USB cables are made to code and as a general rule you should always be suspicious of the colors. I tend to test and flag all of mine with a note saying if they are correct, or what the correct wiring should be.

The next step is to test continuity along the cable. Even if you have a new cable, when troubleshooting there is no room to leave this step out.

Finally, test for continuity all the way from the end of the USB-A connector, to the other side of the board, not the side you soldered to (which will account for the integrity of your solder joint). If any one of those steps fails before you get to this last one, take careful note and look for other evidence to suspect that part.

If everything checks out up to this point, you should test to see that none of the signals are shorted. Not only should you test the ones adjacent to each other, but test each signal to every other. It so happens that a piece of conductive material can find its way into a USB cable or connector (such as a staple or the like) and short signals not adjacent to each other on the board. The only two that could be shorted (and usually are) are GND and S.GND, which isn’t a problem.

It is possible that the board is irreparably damaged, and the first practice I’d suspect over the quality of the solder joints themselves is the amount of time that you left the iron on the board. It’s often necessary to spend more time on soldering ground connections, due to the nature of the ground plane (layer of the board acting as a common point of connection for ground) acting as a heatsink. Nearly any other connection (and any ground connections based on traces alone) has a low tolerance for heat absorption and dissipation, and excessive time (without short breaks) spent on them can cause the traces to become physically damaged, usually because the pads which you solder to are lifted and disconnected from the rest of the trace, or the trace itself is lifted. It is possible to burn the board and to damage the solder mask, but this is caused mostly by excessive heat and force (a sure combination to avoid), and I do not see evidence of this kind of damage in your work.

Another note about your soldering which leaves me to believe that you spent a lot of time reworking these joints is how “dry” the solder looks. When solder is new and has an appropriate amount of flux distributed in the metal, it appears smooth and shiny. It will act more like a fluid when melted and closely bond to heated components. With extensive rework, and every time you melt the solder, more flux will evaporate (what you see as white fumes coming from the iron) and it will gradually turn into a more sloughy mixture until it becomes so depleted of flux that it will not conduct heat properly and will not adhere with heated materials or cohere with itself. At this point the solder can have voids, cracks, and debris internally, which cause a lack of electrical connection. In a nutshell, this is how the RROD is caused (continual cycles of reflowing cause solder to break an electrical connection).

I would just use a solder pump on all of those points until they are no longer shorting each other out.

Next time, you should just cut the USB and solder from there instead of soldering to the underside points.