Not sure if this issue has been brought up before but I used search and went through the first 10 pages or so and couldn’t find a related thread. Recently I decided to mod and old stick I had laying around with a Brook Universal 4-in-1 board.
For the most part things went well, but then the issue came when I tried to solder these points:
I guess accidentally I melted off that solder circle for the Home button point on the left (labeled 2 on the PCB above) as I cleaned off the PCB and only see green board there. Is there any way to repair the home button “point” or am I just out of luck for that button now? Luckily I learned after the home button and the Turbo “point” on the right was soldered correctly. But I didn’t realize these points were so fragile. It’s not a big loss, as I wired the Home button to the turbo button, but I was just interested to see if there was a potential fix for this. Other than that, the lock switch, LS/DP/RS switch, and all the other buttons work fine.**
You could solder to that copper rectangle just to the left of the solder point but it’s dangerously close to the chip. Wouldn’t recommend it unless you’re a risk taker.
I see what you are saying, maybe I can make it a little safer by scraping the green paint on that particular line and solder just off the edge, but that seems a bit risky. I probably wouldn’t do that at this point.
I’ve also heard of this strange method using pencil lead to draw on the PCB, but didn’t have luck with that. From what I heard, it’s supposed to bridged the gap between those lines on the PCB.
If you did that you;d certainly be giving yourself a bit of breathing room between the chip and where you’re soldering, but since it’s still so close to the chip you have to be careful when scraping off the green to expose the trace. Weigh your options and decide which you think is best.
There’s a method that’s a bit more hackish that involves soldering gnd and signal wires directly to the pads on top underneath the rubber dome. but that may make pressing the button a bit uncomfortable since you’d have to push down a bit harder.
Isnt there a point on the top side that you could solder to? I would check for continuity between the pad where the button (i think the top one is signal) is and the solderpoint to the left of it. If theres no continuity you could still try to solder a couple of super fine strands directly to the pad.
If all you want to do is restore the connection where you lifted the pad, you could try conductive electric paint.
Thanks Dubon for the suggestions. Conductive paint is a very unique idea that I never thought of :). I did try to solder directly to the pad on the top and it unfortunately did not work. So I think that thin circle layer of solder completed the connection from the Home button to the chip? I can’t say that for sure, but but if my slightly above mediocre solder skills are to be believed, then that is the case.
I’ll have to see when I have a little more time to look into this. I could possibly see conductive paint along with soldering to the pad on the top working.
Similar to the paint, I’ve also been looking at Silver Conductive Pens
Did you try soldering wires to both sides of the top pad (one for gnd, one for signal)? It won’t work if you just use the signal side since there’s no longer continuity there from removing that point on the other side
Oh, no I did not do that. Hmm, I could possibly do that if I pull apart some CAT5 cable and get thin enough wires to be able to route the cables out and fit under the top plate. Might be a weekend project if I am able to solder that precise as that pad is split up in half: right side = signal and left side = ground(?)
The sides you use for signal and gnd don’t matter since the conductor in the rubber dome will create continuity between the two wires anyway. Just make sure to use a thin gauge wire (the ones found in USB cables should be thin enough if you have any spares) and don’t bridge between the pads when soldering.
EDIT: Nvm, I remembered the PCB was being connected to GND so the sides do in fact matter, unless you do the two wires thing for both buttons and completely disconnect the board itself from GND.
I should probably mention you could order a panel pcb replacement from gummods for 15$.
It just depends on what your trying to do.
-restore original functionality: you need to restore the connection.
-instal a UFB: connection to chip is irrelevant and you could just solder directly to pad or replace with Gummo’s pcb.
Thanks again guys. That Gummods replacement actually looks like a pretty good option as I think the layout of the PS3 MC SE Fighstick PCB seems pretty bad comparatively. I like some of the options that it has also. I may just buy that as backup, but I’ll see how I feel once I get started.
Well, I went ahead and just dove in. I used telephone wire after stripping the outer layer and got 4 smaller wires out of it. I ended up just doing both sides as I’m not sure why, but after soldering to the top pad for the Home button, the Turbo button side stopped working. I’m guessing when you solder directly to the pad, the lock switch doesn’t work also? Though maybe its just the way that I handled the ground wires. I just put them in the Brook PCB ground panel (one of the screws on the panel). But both buttons work, sans the lock switch. Everything else still works, all the buttons, turbo button is trackpad touch btn, home works, ls/dp/rs works, etc. So I guess overall things are good.
For the lock switch, all it really does is open or close the GND connection for those buttons.
Look on the underside of the PCB to find solder points for the lock switch. Take the GND connections for both buttons and solder them to one of the switch’s points, then connect another GND wire from the PCB to the middle solder point of the switch.
I made this diagram to help. I wasn’t sure whether A or C was the correct point. If you end up getting it backwards (i.e. buttons are locked when the slider is on the unlocked position), just desolder the wire and solder it to the other point.
Alright, found a little bit of info on this and it appears like I only needed to solder the ground wires from my buttons to point C on your drawn diagram (or the only point on my picture I don’t have an arrow pointing to). Maybe I took care of the ground for the board when I cut the USB cable off the board and wired up the VCC and GND there? Anyways, thanks again all for the suggestions. The lock switch works for both the Turbo Button and the Home Button now with only a small difference in feel when pressing those buttons. But I can’t complain since the stick is fully functional now.
