replacing the pearl in the clamshell. DIY iBook G3 Clamshell G4 CPU upgrade

[LightBulbFun]

so as ever with these threads I recommend you check out the threads that come before this one

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/making-a-g4-pismo-upgrade-at-home.2019269/

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...2-putting-the-power-into-flowerpower.2040272/

with that out of the way

im pleased to announce that I have been able to successfully swap the G3 PPC750L in a first generation iBook G3 clamshell for a G4 7410

as I have mentioned in the previous threads, there are a number of PowerPC CPUs which are (or are mostly) pin compatible with each other

I have (as well as a few other members) have been doing a lot of research and work into figuring out what CPUs we can swap with what other/better CPUs (both for PowerPC and intel macs...)

one of the ones we figured out was the PPC750L is very pin compatible/friendly with the 7400/7410 G4 CPUs

so as per my previous posts I have (and a couple other members) have been working on physically de-soldering the PPC750L in various macs and soldering in a 7410 (since the 7410 is the best compatible G4)

part of the fun was figuring out which Macs used what CPUs exactly (theres a reason I ask for close up die shots and detailed system information, apart from the fact I just like seeing them )

and it was noticed the first generation iBook G3 clamshell uses a PPC750L! which as mention prior is very G4 friendly, so quite a while ago after I had finished with the iMac CPU Swap I set out to Make a G4 iBook G3

and today it finally came to completion it took a lot longer then I was expecting/ideally like but on the upside my new soldering workstation is much better then what I used on the Pismo/iMac G3

I would like to say a big thanks to @CooperBox for he donated to me the Clamshell used to perform this mod
without his generous donation I would not be able to bring you todays post

(he also sent me a Dead iBook G3 logic-board for me to practice/play with which has come in very useful during this adventure, said Dead board is now missing its RAM L2 cache and CPU )

Now its time for pictures

now that the iBook G3 has a G4, of course it can run leopard due to the iBook being a uninorth machine (it is in fact the very first uninorth mac from apple) Leopard did not need any tweaks/hacks to boot. I think its pretty damn cool to see Leopard running natively on a Clamshell iBook

heres a shot of it running Mac OS 9.2.2, as you can see I left it at 300Mhz as the CPU has barely a heatsink as im sure anyone who has torn down an iBook has found out. so I left the speed at 300Mhz to keep thermals in check as I have not made any mods to the cooling system. (running loops of gauge Pros Memory test the CPU hits a max of "66c") its worth noting that the temperature sensor in the 750-7410 CPUs are more often than not, not accurate. so take the figures with a pinch of salt

heres the shot of the Pads just after I removed the old PPC750L CPU, cleaning the pads up on this was a bit of a PTIA, its much easier to clean the pads up when you lift the chip and most of the solder balls stay attached to the old CPU rather then the PCB, none the less I managed to clean the pads up good enough for the "new" 7410 to solder down nicely to the tin foil is there so I dont melt any nearby connectors especially that one right next to the CPU

heres a side on shot of the 7410 freshly soldered, it was still cooling down when i took this shot its worth noting that, most PPC CPUs use 0.89Mm solder balls, but for whatever reason 0.89MM Balls and stencils dont seem to exist anymore...(if anyone knows where one might find 0.89Mm solder balls and stencils please do let me know ) so anyone doing this today has to use 0.76Mm balls which work fine apart from the fact the CPU sits lower down then originally intended, so depending on your heatsink setup you might need some sort of copper or so shim so the heatsink makes proper contact. on my iBook I left the original thermal pads intact but also added a generous blob of thermal goop to the CPU to be on the safe side.

and heres the money shot this CPU is from a 533Mhz PowerMac G4 DA CPU card, so in the future if/when i get better cooling setup I should be able to clock the G4 iBook G3 quite high im hoping to hit 600Mhz which uses the highest multiplier the 7410 supports which is 9x (66*9=600) I also have the L2 cache from the PMG4s CPU card, so I do plan on trying to upgrade the L2 cache in this iBook from 512KB to 1MB at some point so stay tuned for that (for those wondering this CPU was made 50th week Y2K)

its worth noting as well that if you plan to try this your self on any mac, Make sure the BootROM is fully up to date first. an out of date BootROM can cause all sorts of issues. for example on the iBook G3, earlier boot ROM versions dont properly support the 7410 and dont support detection of higher speeds properly (so if you decided to overclock it would be miss reported in OS X etc) and the older boot ROM prevents Leopard from booting even with the G4 CPU (this also holds true for the G4 cube and probably other early G4 Uninorth macs as well)

if you are interested in finding out more/doing this your self I recommend checking out this thread on the 68kMLA https://68kmla.org/forums/index.php?/topic/28556-imac-g3-rev-a-c-g4-cpu-upgrade/&

and finally here are some GeekBench results the iBook has been completely stable since doing the swap and has not crashed once despite intensive stress testing

https://browser.geekbench.com/geekbench2/2651738 this is in Tiger with GeekBench 2.2.0

https://browser.geekbench.com/geekbench2/2651744 and this is in Leopard with GeekBench 2.2.7

now what Mac to do next Id love to get a 7448 and try and upgrade the CPU in a DLSD, and id like to also get an MPC740 to try and upgrade the 603ev in my 4400 to a G3 but getting ahold the CPUs especially ones that Apple did not use in any of their macs is easier said then done...

I hope you enjoyed reading this, and I hope it helps out anyone in the future researching or attempting to do what I have done here

 

[appleish19]

so as ever with these threads I recommend you check out the threads that come before this one

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/making-a-g4-pismo-upgrade-at-home.2019269/

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...2-putting-the-power-into-flowerpower.2040272/

with that out of the way

im pleased to announce that I have been able to successfully swap the G3 PPC750L in a first generation iBook G3 clamshell for a G4 7410

as I have mentioned in the previous threads, there are a number of PowerPC CPUs which are (or are mostly) pin compatible with each other

I have (as well as a few other members) have been doing a lot of research and work into figuring out what CPUs we can swap with what other/better CPUs (both for PowerPC and intel macs...)

one of the ones we figured out was the PPC750L is very pin compatible/friendly with the 7400/7410 G4 CPUs

so as per my previous posts I have (and a couple other members) have been working on physically de-soldering the PPC750L in various macs and soldering in a 7410 (since the 7410 is the best compatible G4)

part of the fun was figuring out which Macs used what CPUs exactly (theres a reason I ask for close up die shots and detailed system information, apart from the fact I just like seeing them )

and it was noticed the first generation iBook G3 clamshell uses a PPC750L! which as mention prior is very G4 friendly, so quite a while ago after I had finished with the iMac CPU Swap I set out to Make a G4 iBook G3

and today it finally came to completion it took a lot longer then I was expecting/ideally like but on the upside my new soldering workstation is much better then what I used on the Pismo/iMac G3

I would like to say a big thanks to @CooperBox for he donated to me the Clamshell used to perform this mod
without his generous donation I would not be able to bring you todays post

(he also sent me a Dead iBook G3 logic-board for me to practice/play with which has come in very useful during this adventure, said Dead board is now missing its RAM L2 cache and CPU )

Now its time for pictures

now that the iBook G3 has a G4, of course it can run leopard due to the iBook being a uninorth machine (it is in fact the very first uninorth mac from apple) Leopard did not need any tweaks/hacks to boot. I think its pretty damn cool to see Leopard running natively on a Clamshell iBook
View attachment 750903

heres a shot of it running Mac OS 9.2.2, as you can see I left it at 300Mhz as the CPU has barely a heatsink as im sure anyone who has torn down an iBook has found out. so I left the speed at 300Mhz to keep thermals in check as I have not made any mods to the cooling system. (running loops of gauge Pros Memory test the CPU hits a max of "66c") its worth noting that the temperature sensor in the 750-7410 CPUs are more often than not, not accurate. so take the figures with a pinch of salt
View attachment 750904

heres the shot of the Pads just after I removed the old PPC750L CPU, cleaning the pads up on this was a bit of a PTIA, its much easier to clean the pads up when you lift the chip and most of the solder balls stay attached to the old CPU rather then the PCB, none the less I managed to clean the pads up good enough for the "new" 7410 to solder down nicely to the tin foil is there so I dont melt any nearby connectors especially that one right next to the CPU
View attachment 750905

heres a side on shot of the 7410 freshly soldered, it was still cooling down when i took this shot its worth noting that, most PPC CPUs use 0.89Mm solder balls, but for whatever reason 0.89MM Balls and stencils dont seem to exist anymore...(if anyone knows where one might find 0.89Mm solder balls and stencils please do let me know ) so anyone doing this today has to use 0.76Mm balls which work fine apart from the fact the CPU sits lower down then originally intended, so depending on your heatsink setup you might need some sort of copper or so shim so the heatsink makes proper contact. on my iBook I left the original thermal pads intact but also added a generous blob of thermal goop to the CPU to be on the safe side.
View attachment 750906

and heres the money shot this CPU is from a 533Mhz PowerMac G4 DA CPU card, so in the future if/when i get better cooling setup I should be able to clock the G4 iBook G3 quite high im hoping to hit 600Mhz which uses the highest multiplier the 7410 supports which is 9x (66*9=600) I also have the L2 cache from the PMG4s CPU card, so I do plan on trying to upgrade the L2 cache in this iBook from 512KB to 1MB at some point so stay tuned for that (for those wondering this CPU was made 50th week Y2K)
View attachment 750928


its worth noting as well that if you plan to try this your self on any mac, Make sure the BootROM is fully up to date first. an out of date BootROM can cause all sorts of issues. for example on the iBook G3, earlier boot ROM versions dont properly support the 7410 and dont support detection of higher speeds properly (so if you decided to overclock it would be miss reported in OS X etc) and the older boot ROM prevents Leopard from booting even with the G4 CPU (this also holds true for the G4 cube and probably other early G4 Uninorth macs as well)

if you are interested in finding out more/doing this your self I recommend checking out this thread on the 68kMLA https://68kmla.org/forums/index.php?/topic/28556-imac-g3-rev-a-c-g4-cpu-upgrade/&

and finally here are some GeekBench results the iBook has been completely stable since doing the swap and has not crashed once despite intensive stress testing

https://browser.geekbench.com/geekbench2/2651738 this is in Tiger with GeekBench 2.2.0

https://browser.geekbench.com/geekbench2/2651744 and this is in Leopard with GeekBench 2.2.7

now what Mac to do next Id love to get a 7448 and try and upgrade the CPU in a DLSD, and id like to also get an MPC740 to try and upgrade the 603ev in my 4400 to a G3 but getting ahold the CPUs especially ones that Apple did not use in any of their macs is easier said then done...

I hope you enjoyed reading this, and I hope it helps out anyone in the future researching or attempting to do what I have done here

This is awesome. Thanks so much for the write up. I’m going to be CPU swapping a 2007 iMac so I can run High Sierra. Maybe I’ll have to look into PowerPC swapping as well.

Love my 550 MHz upgrade G4 in my Pismo!

 

[AphoticD]

Brilliant! You must be thrilled it went together without a hitch. As with any successful job, good preparation makes the world of difference. Congrats mate!

This kind of upgrade is a real rarity. I'm sure you'll be able to bump up the PLL multiplier to at least 400Mhz before "enhancing" the little iBook's cooling.

So, despite the reported CPU temps, have you noticed any increase in temperature and if you lift up the keyboard and touch the cooler / shield where the CPU is, does it feel any hotter than the G3 did?

Just from my own experiences, a fresh thermal pad will make a big difference too. They tend to get squishy/juicy after a few years of heat transfer.

Well done again, this is a great accomplishment!

I wonder how many clamshells are out there running Leopard.. speaking of which, does the little GPU keep up enough to make the UI usable?

 

[dosdude1]

I performed this same modification just the other day. My machine had an upgraded heatsink mod installed, which allowed me to get the CPU up to its stock 500 MHz clock speed. I originally got the chip off a 500 MHz PowerBook G4 Titanium logic board. It works absolutely perfectly, and I have had no issues with it whatsoever. It seems to run nice and cool. Some pictures can be viewed here.

 

[LightBulbFun]

Brilliant! You must be thrilled it went together without a hitch. As with any successful job, good preparation makes the world of difference. Congrats mate!

This kind of upgrade is a real rarity. I'm sure you'll be able to bump up the PLL multiplier to at least 400Mhz before "enhancing" the little iBook's cooling.

So, despite the reported CPU temps, have you noticed any increase in temperature and if you lift up the keyboard and touch the cooler / shield where the CPU is, does it feel any hotter than the G3 did?

Just from my own experiences, a fresh thermal pad will make a big difference too. They tend to get squishy/juicy after a few years of heat transfer.

Well done again, this is a great accomplishment!

I wonder how many clamshells are out there running Leopard.. speaking of which, does the little GPU keep up enough to make the UI usable?

Thanks

as well as playing with the CPU speed I also plan on trying to see if I can get the bus to 100Mhz speaking of Bus speed, I do plan on swapping a 100Mhz MPC106 grackle chip from a G3 BW into a G3 beige in place of its 66Mhz grackle chip, and seeing if can do a stable 83Mhz its a shame theres no jumper charts that go up to 100Mhz on a G3 beige, at least I have not come across any. (and thats assuming the rest of the motherboard could support that "high" a frequency )

ill give it the old finger temperature probe test and see how it compares to my stock iBook G3 clamshell (I really need to order some more 512MB SDRAM SODIMMs I have 1 shared between 5 ,Books LOL)

"tend to get juicy" is an understatement LOL the ones that sit on the bottom pan of this G3 have been "crying" they leaked some weird oily residue all down the bottom of the pan, quite strange iv never seen a thermal pad do that before... (the chips where wet with this residue as well)

in regards to the Rage Pro GPU in Leopard, well Leopard removed all the kexts and retains just basic NDRV support for anything Older then Radeon. so the GPU aint doing anything basically, the GUI is being pushed around by the CPU alone, I have been told by @dosdude1 that like the Rage 128, you can copy over the Rage Pro Kexts from tiger and they will work in leopard on the iBook G3 which im planning to play with my self tomorrow

but the Rage Pro has very weak OS X support even in supported versions of OS X (10.0-10.4) they dont do OpenGL in OS X for example something Apple actually got sued over LOL so even with the kexts added back the CPU is going to be doing a large amount of the work, but I will be trying out the tiger kexts in leopard and reporting back how it goes

on that note its worth mentioning that the G4 had a nice boost on GUI performance in Tiger im guessing thats altivec at play there
[doublepost=1518414239][/doublepost]

I performed this same modification just the other day. My machine had an upgraded heatsink mod installed, which allowed me to get the CPU up to its stock 500 MHz clock speed. I originally got the chip off a 500 MHz PowerBook G4 Titanium logic board. It works absolutely perfectly, and I have had no issues with it whatsoever. It seems to run nice and cool. Some pictures can be viewed here.

pretty cool how we did the same upgrade at almost the same time

its nice to see other members successfully do this sort of BGA rework, its funny how on pretty much all forums, if you ask "Can I replace a BGA CPU?" everyone will tell you, you would be crazy to try and its impossible

but here we are doing the "impossible" at home...

 

[0248294]

I wonder how many clamshells are out there running Leopard.

There's actually a handful of G4 Clamshells out in the wild now, given that on 68kMLA, one member (max1zzz, he is on MR but I forgot what his username is here) upgraded a few Clamshells to G4 processors, as well as @dosdude1 upgrading one right around the same time as @LightBulbFun did his. These are still the only known G4 Clamshells to date, though.

 

[weckart]

Tempted to have a go with a spare Pismo cpu card I have. It looks as if eBay is not a good source for the 7410 CPUs unless money is no object.

 

[0248294]

Tempted to have a go with a spare Pismo cpu card I have. It looks as if eBay is not a good source for the 7410 CPUs unless money is no object.

You can get them from this seller (note to mods: I have zero affiliation with this seller) for either $20 for a single 7410, $100 for 5 and the only option that shaves off a few dollars of the chips, $180 for 10. They used to be $12 each or so, so I do recommend still getting them now before the seller hikes them again. Either the seller is running out of stock, or the increased demand due to these experiments has moved them to do this.

 

[LightBulbFun]

Tempted to have a go with a spare Pismo cpu card I have. It looks as if eBay is not a good source for the 7410 CPUs unless money is no object.

if you dont mind reballing the chip yourself you can always find a PowerMac G4 CPU card and rob the CPU off of that . there also plenty of people who offer BGA rework services where you can send them the goods and they will solder everything in place, a couple guys on the 68kMLA thread did that for their Pismo cards (it seems most people have spare Pismo cards lying around )

most people I have seen do this use 533 DA CPU Cards, but other 7410/7400 cards should work due to 7410s being the best chips for this and how "easy" they are to find (compared to other PPC chips) I dont think anyone has actually tried swapping a 7400 of some kind into any G3 mac although in theory it should work as I have mentioned in other posts, there are actually 3 diffrent PPC CPUs that go under the "7400" name, theres the Original 7400 which has a large Square Die, then theres Die shrunk? 7400 which always Rev 2.9 these have a smaller rectangular die like the 7410 Apple used those on the GigE and the 466Mhz DA mostly I would like to find a card with one of these chips and physically compare it to the 7410. and the 3rd chip is the very rare IBM G4 im not entirely sure which macs got these, but I think it was GigEs and G4 cubes only.

I have a comparison photo in this thread, the only 7400 im lacking from this comparison is the die shrunk? last rev 7400

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/my-powermac-g4-lucky-dip-twins.2070101/#post-25158661

 

[LightBulbFun]

I wonder how many clamshells are out there running Leopard.. speaking of which, does the little GPU keep up enough to make the UI usable?

I got round to moving the RagePro.kext and RageProGA.bundle from Tiger to Leopard

the RagePro.kext does load and work in Leopard but as I expected GUI performance is about the same still LOL

 

[max¥¥]

and the 3rd chip is the very rare IBM G4 im not entirely sure which macs got these, but I think it was GigEs and G4 cubes only.

Those IBM Cpu's where on DA CPU cards too, I have one sitting in my tray of PPC CPU's that I pulled off a DA card (One identical to the one the CPU you used in the iBook came from in fact)

It's very cool to see you have done this, i'm interested to see if you encounter any thermal issues. The guy I modded a load of these for reported some stability issues at 533mhz so we downclocked to 500mhz and they seemed to be ok.

I still have my Clamshell sitting disassembled waiting for a CPU upgrade. I have done this mod 5 times yet still haven't done mine!

 

[LightBulbFun]

Those IBM Cpu's where on DA CPU cards too, I have one sitting in my tray of PPC CPU's that I pulled off a DA card (One identical to the one the CPU you used in the iBook came from in fact)

It's very cool to see you have done this, i'm interested to see if you encounter any thermal issues. The guy I modded a load of these for reported some stability issues at 533mhz so we downclocked to 500mhz and they seemed to be ok.

I still have my Clamshell sitting disassembled waiting for a CPU upgrade. I have done this mod 5 times yet still haven't done mine!

very interesting do you remember if the IBM CPU card had a PN of 820-1175-A? thats the PN for the 466 and 533Mhz DA CPU cards from what I have seen. it would be interesting to know what CPU speed it was rated for? theres very little information on these IBM G4s available sadly (my 400Mhz IBM G4 is 820-1163-A which im guessing came from a 400Mhz GigE ) I do know the rated clock speed of IBM CPUs is usually encoded in some form or another in the black "IBM25..." text at the bottom of the CPU, for reference mine says IBM2506K5319 and is a 400Mhz part

it would be Fun to try and fit that IBM G4 to a clamshell or iMac or so, that would be a truly unique Macintosh

so far the Thermals seem to be pretty good, and its been rock solid stable, but im only running at 300Mhz, when I do attempt an overclock ill report back on how it does

 

[max¥¥]

I'm 99% sure it was a 820-1175-A, All 4 DA cards I brought had the same part number and that one sounds right. I'm assuming it is a 533mhz one as the cards where sold as 533mhz cards and all the Motorola chips where 533mhz

I'm saveing it for something cool, What exactly I haven't decided though.... Maybe If i ever get around to noodling out the power issues with the kanga it will go into that

 

[647156]

I still have my dead DA/466 here for now and it has 820-1175-A on the CPU card. By the way, what you have done here is absolutely amazing, I would never have thought something like this was even remotely possible!

 

[CooperBox]

Well, what can I say? A briiliant achievement. And I'm only too pleased that I was able to contribute with the Clamshell parts, so you've certainly made my day too!

Interestingly enough I've been contemplating the purchase of a hot-air/soldering rework station for some time, just for general soldering/de-soldering tasks, but certainly won't be embarking on any work as complex as what we're seeing here. In fact the only 're-balling' I'm up to is strictly limited to re-setting up the table for another game of snooker........

Must confess I'm confused at the many types of equipment on the market, especially the many clones with similar names and/or model numbers, Aoyue, Yihua, Atten, Wep, Gordak, 858D/853D/968D etc.
I don't wish to go for a Hakko unit, patially due to the price, but mainly because it wouldn't be cost effective in a non-pro, infrequent-use role. So for those in the know, if you were buying today could you give me an idea of what to go for?
I'm prepared to pay up to £130 but would want pretty reasonable quality, and also be prepared to spend a few hrs modifying certain pretty basic features if required to bring it up to par. All thoughts & comments welcomed.

 

[0248294]

Well, what can I say? A briiliant achievement. And I'm only too pleased that I was able to contribute with the Clamshell parts, so you've certainly made my day too!

Interestingly enough I've been contemplating the purchase of a hot-air/soldering rework station for some time, just for general soldering/de-soldering tasks, but certainly won't be embarking on any work as complex as what we're seeing here. In fact the only 're-balling' I'm up to is strictly limited to re-setting up the table for another game of snooker........

Must confess I'm confused at the many types of equipment on the market, especially the many clones with similar names and/or model numbers, Aoyue, Yihua, Atten, Wep, Gordak, 858D/853D/968D etc.
I don't wish to go for a Hakko unit, patially due to the price, but mainly because it wouldn't be cost effective in a non-pro, infrequent-use role. So for those in the know, if you were buying today could you give me an idea of what to go for?
I'm prepared to pay up to £130 but would want pretty reasonable quality, and also be prepared to spend a few hrs modifying certain pretty basic features if required to bring it up to par. All thoughts & comments welcomed.

I personally bought the 858D recently. While there's a bunch of different brands out there, they're all pretty much the same. For €30 quickly shipped from Germany, it was a no brainer. It's no miracle tool, but it's good enough for these CPU swaps. I think it's what @LightBulbFun is using too. We're both still looking in setting up some sort of bottom heater, so the entire board is heated while working on it (this is advised to prevent "popcorning", which is PCB damage from trapped moisture in the board that escapes quickly under the extreme heat of the hot air station, popping out the PCB layers, and to prevent warping). I'm personally looking for a cheap griddle (not used, that's just kinda gross), which while it's kinda crappy, it does do the job. It's all about doing it as cheap as possible

 

[LightBulbFun]

Well, what can I say? A briiliant achievement. And I'm only too pleased that I was able to contribute with the Clamshell parts, so you've certainly made my day too!

Interestingly enough I've been contemplating the purchase of a hot-air/soldering rework station for some time, just for general soldering/de-soldering tasks, but certainly won't be embarking on any work as complex as what we're seeing here. In fact the only 're-balling' I'm up to is strictly limited to re-setting up the table for another game of snooker........

Must confess I'm confused at the many types of equipment on the market, especially the many clones with similar names and/or model numbers, Aoyue, Yihua, Atten, Wep, Gordak, 858D/853D/968D etc.
I don't wish to go for a Hakko unit, patially due to the price, but mainly because it wouldn't be cost effective in a non-pro, infrequent-use role. So for those in the know, if you were buying today could you give me an idea of what to go for?
I'm prepared to pay up to £130 but would want pretty reasonable quality, and also be prepared to spend a few hrs modifying certain pretty basic features if required to bring it up to par. All thoughts & comments welcomed.

Dans reply is pretty good

ill just mention a few more things, as he said the 858D hot air gun is made by several diffrent companies out of china. heres a photo of my specific gear, if I had to guess I probably have spent about £100 or so on this setup no need for $10000 BGA rework machines here

both me and dan have "HVLKO" branded 858Ds

and my soldering iron is a clone of the Hakko 936 but with digital controls/a digital face. (I got my soldering iron from a slightly more "official" source in the UK hence the diffrent branding and model number)

it is worth mentioning that this is about as cheap as you want to get, and for more money of course, you can get much better tools which can make this sort of work a lot easier/safer

 

[max¥¥]

I'll put in another vote on the 858D. I have the "original" Atten version and it has never let me down. I recently replaced it with a Hakko FR-810B which is brilliant but cost me almost £600.... Unless you are doing a large amount of rework there is no need to spend that much (My 858 is now at work and actually gets used more than the hakko, it's still going strong after about 7 years or use. We used it daily for removing iPad screens and the odd macbook Logicboard repair)

In regards to the idea of a bottom heater, a cheap griddle will do. I had one that I used to do xbox 360 GPU's on and it never let me down. If you want to go a little more professional you can pick up a puhui t-8280 for about £130 on eaby from time to time. I have one and it's a good bit of kit, cheaply made, but it works (And is the only proper IR heater that is a decent size that I could find for under £1000!)

 

[weckart]

I went a bit cheaper and plumped for this Katsu 852D, which I paid £42 for.



The main reason was that both the hot air gun and the soldering iron are detachable. Most Hakko 2-in-1 clones seem to have a fixed hot air gun with only the soldering iron detachable. Whichever cheap Hakko copy you buy, they all seem to use exactly the same soldering iron and hot air gun, both of which are very cheap to replace.

 

[LightBulbFun]

I went a bit cheaper and plumped for this Katsu 852D, which I paid £42 for.

View attachment 751052

The main reason was that both the hot air gun and the soldering iron are detachable. Most Hakko 2-in-1 clones seem to have a fixed hot air gun with only the soldering iron detachable. Whichever cheap Hakko copy you buy, they all seem to use exactly the same soldering iron and hot air gun, both of which are very cheap to replace.

that is surprisingly cheap for what you get good to know whats out there

its worth noting the one place you dont want to cheap out for this sort of work is

your Flux and your solder wick, if you have bad wick it can make cleaning up the solder pads a much harder task with a much higher risk to damaging the board (ripping/lifting pads etc) and if you have bad flux then your solder wont flow properly and theres a good chance your BGA chip wont solder down properly, this is what caused the L2 issues with My Pismo as i was using a poor quality flux at the start before I got the Amtech NC559 V2 stuff.

the flux i use is https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/230678109817 its very important to make sure you get genuine Amtech flux theres a lot of fake stuff out there, which as Louis Rossmann puts it is usually northing more then vaseline in a tube if your lucky LOL if your in the US Louis Rossmann sells the genuine stuff directly on his store, if your in the UK/EU then the stuff I have linked im almost certain its genuine (I hope it is since that listing is where i get mine from and it works very very well)

the solder wick i use is http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/172083224270 the same stuff i said for the flux also applies here, granted if you can only choose between good flux or good wick, go for the good Flux, you can always coat the bad quality wick in the good flux (since after-all, all solder wick is, is copper braid thats impregnated with flux )

it is worth mentioning tho, that if all your planning to do is simple through hole components/boards, then such flux/solder braid arguably is not really needed

but if your planning to do BGA rework or any other sort of "complicated" soldering work then good flux and wick is a must. (the Amtech flux especially is magical, it makes solder joints flow so nicely its almost therapeutic LOL)

(I wish they made a T shaped/broom/spatula style tip for the 936 type soldering irons, those tips make cleaning up BGA Pads a breeze)

 

[weckart]

Thanks for the braid and flux tips. I was using generic wick to recap a Mac SE board and it only did so much. I ended up using a Dremel to drill the remaining RoHS solder out of the holes. Not classy but it worked.

One other general bit of advice I would give is not to buy directly from China. Safety standards seem lower there and some soldering stations are not properly earthed.

from 10:30 mins in.

 

[LightBulbFun]

Thanks for the braid and flux tips. I was using generic wick to recap a Mac SE board and it only did so much. I ended up using a Dremel to drill the remaining RoHS solder out of the holes. Not classy but it worked.

One other general bit of advice I would give is not to buy directly from China. Safety standards seem lower there and some soldering stations are not properly earthed.

from 10:30 mins in.

Np its amazing how much of a diffrence good flux and braid can make

tho I would not advise (and im sure ya know this just mentioning it to be safe as well as for others still learning the ropes) that in drilling the solder out, you could quite easily damage the through hole, the hole for the lead is metal plated through even on the sides of the hole to connect all the internal layers and drilling can damage that plating.

thats is an issue with buying any rip off iron. they can be quite dodgy electrically some times, hence when i got my kit the first thing I did was open it up and give it a once over, my soldering iron despite coming from within the UK actually had a dodgy non compliant plug on it (it had a sleeved earth pin!) which I promptly lopped off and put my own proper British BS1363 plug on (the hot air station came with a safe plug but I still replaced the fuse in that, I just dont trust the fuses that come in this sort of kit I made sure to replace it with a genuine BS1362 fuse)

IIRC in the units i got both of them where properly earthed but your millage may vary be warned

 

[weckart]

my soldering iron despite coming from within the UK actually had a dodgy non compliant plug on it (it had a sleeved earth pin!) which I promptly lopped off and put my own proper British BS1363 plug on

You would think that sellers would stipulate/check for certain standards if only to protect their own back. My kit is sold by Amazon and, I think CPC or RS as well so it should better be compliant with UK standards.

As for wick, I note that the price fluctuates for Goot - £3 in the UK or £1 from the Philippines if you don't mind the wait. Are there lots of forgeries around? I wouldn't necessarily trust those "from HK", for instance. Do you rate Chem Wick as a brand?

 

[LightBulbFun]

You would think that sellers would stipulate/check for certain standards if only to protect their own back. My kit is sold by Amazon and, I think CPC or RS as well so it should better be compliant with UK standards.

As for wick, I note that the price fluctuates for Goot - £3 in the UK or £1 from the Philippines if you don't mind the wait. Are there lots of forgeries around? I wouldn't necessarily trust those "from HK", for instance. Do you rate Chem Wick as a brand?

the show fake Britain is a fun one to watch in regards to that I would still make sure to check out your kit. (esp the Plug and earthing)

as for the Wick and flux, from what I understand there is unfortunately quite a lot of forgeries around. in regards to chem wick I do have some, its works good but I have found the Goot wick I bought from the seller/link above to work much better, the seller also has Lots of 5 of the goot wick where you can save a couple quid http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/181512808154 if your planning to go through a lot of it.

again im not 100% sure my self that the the stuff im getting is Genuine, but i know at least that it does work very well compared to what I have used in the past so I think/would hope the stuff I have linked is genuine

 

[weckart]

About 20 minutes ago, my MBP Santa Rosa suddenly gave up the ghost. The ticking timebomb blew up after over a decade. Still on the original logic board. I think my next project will be a reflow using the checked out Katsu. If that goes well, I might look into reballing it with leaded solder. That means I shall have a legit excuse to invest in pricey flux.

If my understanding is correct, I need to flood the GPU with as much flux as I can cram in and then cook it with the hotgun until the flux flushes out as much crud as it can. That should allow the existing RoHS solder to reattach itself to the pads on the LB and chip. Correct?