I’m familiar with soldering (not an expert) but soldering the psone dualshock H is such a pain in the ass, and it’s supposed to be easy too. I’m having trouble getting the solder to adhere to the signals/pcb, and also do the black rubbery things matter? Because I’ve been trying to get it together for 2 days now and I kinda smothered the whole pcb with the black stuff.
I’m trying to apply solder onto the signals/ground, then just heat it up shortly after so that the wire attaches. But everytime I try it either sticks to the soldering iron or the soldering wire itself. I’m aware that you heat the pcb first, then let the solder flow onto it, am I doing anything wrong? Also, I’m using 18 gauge wire, will that have any affect on the final product?
Actually the Sony brand PS1/2 Dual Shock controllers are one of the harder pads to solder too. Also yes, you should of pulled off the rubber domes and the contact points carefully cleaned off with a edge of a sharp knife. Just enough to show copper, but not enough to strip the metal off the board.
People prefer the old PS1 Digital pads or the Madcatz PS2 pads. You can also go with a PCB kit like the MC Cthulhu.
18 gauge wire is thick but it should work, most people use 20 to 28 gauge wire. Thinner wire is easier to solder with.
thanks man I just checked and it is starting to adhere. Actually I have a digital pad custom stick, the spots were pretty damn small but it worked, thanks for the tip.
The PS1 pad can be a bugger to solder. Make sure the scrape the black points like he mentioned. Soldering to the copper pads or traces will lead to heartbreak.
You’re not actually supposed to use the soldering iron to melt the solder, as counter-intuitive as that would sound. The point of a soldering iron is to heat up a metal surface to the point that it melts the solder for you, not the iron. Solder wants very much to stick to the hottest metal thing around, and if your wires aren’t hot, then it’s gonna be the iron. I had this issue for a while myself, before I checked Slagcoin for soldering advice. Just finished removing the sticks off my PS1 Dualshock A (early) and adding resistors yesterday. You should use the iron to heat the wire AND the contact point of the PCB at the same time, and then apply the solder to both. The solder will very easily stick to the surfaces if you do it that way.
And the black stuff is a conductive material, but it’s not metal. You should definitely scratch it off of anything you’re soldering to.
I honestly don’t know how you guys find these hard. I’ve hacked at least a half dozen of these. Not only are they an easy hack, but they are generally preferred to old PS1 digital pads due to better converter compatibility.
You just have to not go overboard with the scrapping. It’s really not too tricky.
Thanks. Yep. It’s an oldie. I feel compelled to dig it up when people mention the PS1 pad.
I killed 3 or 4 PS1 PCBs when I was first learning to solder. Someone told me to scrape the black gunk and I’ve been reiterating it ever since. If you happen to get a PCB with the little copper pads they’re mighty inviting. Unfortunately they also pop off easily.
The test pad ‘circles’ should never ever be weaker than scraped areas. If you want to take a metal scrubby to it to remove oxidation from the copper first, but there is no reason those test points cant be used securely.
But really, on that style of PSOne pad? Remove the ribbon from the main board with the analog sticks, and solder the wires in nice neat clean rows on the main board. The spots are there, easy to get to, gets rid of that useless daughterboard, and comes out super clean.
Unless youre a noob to soldering. Then scrape and solder to the daughterboard. If you get good, or mess up the daughterboard, you can always remove it later and solder to the main board.
I should of realized that, then again at first i was not sure which PCB it was or how good at soldering otakugamer is.
Toodles you are da Fetus of Gawd!
