Simple Tutorial on How to Fix Broken Traces

Thomas Mitchell

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• Publié par: Shuwyeng
• Nombre de lectures: 29
• Langue: English

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Simple Tutorial on How to
Fix Broken Traces

Let me guess, your first words were "OH SHIT, I
JUST LIFTED A TRACE". Then comes the shaking and
the repeating of cretin words. But don't worry, with a little
but of patience you can fix it. I myself lifted 2 traces on my
X-Box motherboard in a freak accident, but with a little bit
concentration and time I fixed it. So, Just recently I
decided to write this tutorial. Please note that the pictures
in this example are not that of an actual Xbox mobo,
because I'm not going to re-fix my Xbox, but they will be
very similar to the circumstances.

List of Common Tools:

1) Soldering Iron(15w, or 20w)
2) Magnet wire (Assorted Enamel-Coated from Radio
Shack)
3) A new Soldering tip for your soldering Iron (Not
Necessary, but recommended)
4) Silver-Bearing Solder w/ Rosin Core from Radio Shack
.022 dia. 5) Exacto Knife
6) Sand Paper (Not Necessary)

Pic of the wire used.

Pre Soldering

1) Calm Down, I suggest waiting a day or at least a couple
of hours.

2) Survey the situation.

3) Plan out what you are going to do.

Ok, Lets get down to the nitty-gritty
I came up with about 3 different ways to fix broken traces.
1) Screw it! (Just get my X-Box back!)
2) Half Fix (Just get the Mod working)
3) Full Fix (Get the whole shebang fixed)

Each one is basically a different level of fix. Screw it! is
just getting your x-box back. Half, if mod only Fix. Full,
is the full fix with the MS bios and the Mod working.




1) Screw It!

Ok, you decided that you don't want your mod in and you
just want your Xbox back.
This is the easiest of the fixes.
1) First Strip about an inch of the enamel of of the magnet
wire, and plug in your Iron.
2) Then cut a piece that is just large enough to gap the
break, this will be your jumper. 3) Using the exacto knife, gingerly scratch off, on both
sides of the gap, a small portion of the "green stuff" that
covers the embedded wires.
4) Put the jumper that you just created across the gap.
5) Use the exacto knife to hold the jumper in place by
pinning it down.
6) Using your soldering iron carefully heat up the jumper
while feeding it solder. You should only need a very small
amount of solder. Do not put solder on the tip of your Iron
first, then heat up the jumper.
7) Remove the Iron while still Holding the exacto knife,
and wait about 10 seconds for it to set before removing.
8) Remove the exacto knife and test it out.

Here is a very crude drawing of what it should look
like, I don't have the pics up yet, So these will hafta do.



Half Fix.
Ok, so you decided that you want your mod working but
you don't want to spend the extra time getting the original
ms bios working. Note: This will only work if you lift the
trace to the executor pin (#9). If you solder the magnet
repair wire to the right side of the break (if you are looking
at the picture as it is facing you now.) only the modchip
will boot and not the MS bios, so those of you with
pcbioxx will not be able to boot into MS bios.




Half fix.

1) First Strip about an inch of the enamel of of the magnet
wire, and plug in your Iron.
2) Then cut a piece that is large enough to go from the
board to your mod.
3) Using the exacto knife, gingerly scratch off, a small
portion of the "green stuff" that covers the embedded
wires. At this point i would suggest lining up the wire to
the board and using the hot glue gun to hold it in place, this
makes things a lot easier
4) Using your soldering iron carefully heat up the wire
while feeding it solder. You
should only need a very small amount of solder. Do not put
solder on the tip of yourIron first and then heat up the
jumper. Rather feed the solder to the hot wire.
5) Remove the Iron while still Holding the exacto knife,
and wait about 10 seconds for it to set before removing.
6) Remove the exacto knife and test it out by connecting
the magnet wire to your Mod.
7) I recommend hot-gluing the magnet wire to your board
about 1/2 inch from where you just soldered it




Full fix.

1) Follow steps from above, but do the same for each side
of the break.
2) Solder the two pieces of magnet wire together 3) Run another piece of wire from the two magnet wire
joint to your mod. This
will emulate what was supposed to happen while the
trace was still there.







Steps in order