.ZNING: 2008

Not mine of course :P Haha. Its my friends. His calculator got pretty screwed up and many of the buttons could not be pressed. He told me that some people said that the battery leaked and the liquid caused the calculator's inside to corrode and spoil. So i decided to take a look.

Opened it up and wah it was a mess. All the dried up battery water was inside and it was slimy. Took it for a wash and rubbed it clean. At first i thought it would be a simple thing cause maybe it was just dirt but after washing and trying to turn it on again, it didn't seem so easy.

Spent like 30 mins before I figured out that the battery water has actually corroded the conducting tracks on the PCB to the extent that a few of them are no longer conducting anymore. So i whipped out my trusty soldering iron and some enamel coated wire and began re-routing the tracks with the enamel wire. It wasn't easy and my hands were kind of shaky today.

After around 30 mins, i finally finished re-routing all the necessary tracks. Tried it again but oh bugger, it was even worst. I tried and tried and tried all sorts of method but it just didn't work. Logic was telling me that what i did was correct but i just couldn't solve the problem. I got so frustrated that i decided to give up.

I closed up the thing and screwed the whole thing up till the final cover. It was only then that i realised that i had screwed the screw in the wrong place inside so i couldn't screw the top cover up. Screw it!

So i had to reopen the whole thing again. This made me hand itchy again and i decided to give it one last shot. I desoldered the whole thing, and resoldered the whole thing again but this time in phases so that i would know which track that i re-routed controlled which buttons. This was a better choice as i could see if the soldering was done right. The first one went in and :D It worked! I restored the number zero and some other numbers when replacing one track. Then i moved on to the rest and finally everything was back and working fine.

I tried to neaten my soldering with some solder flux and dang, that was a bad decision. it screwed the whole thing again-_- Now the stupid feeling was feeling up in me and i was starting to feel damn sian about this. At first i didn't know what was wrong again but heck, i decided to just wash it with some water again. WOW! After washing with water and drying it with a hair dryer, it worked again! So happy. And i realised that this thing couldn't had alot of flux lying on the conducting pads cause i think the flux could conduct electricity too. So yea washing away the flux solved the problem. Closed it up and :D a job done again. So happy!

Yea okay i guess about 90% of the people who read what was up there understood nuts about it but in short i repaired another GC.

So anw, yesterday's night was very very clear. I couldn't resist but to take a photo of it. Here it is: