I recently purchased a 20W soldering iron, something like this **broken link removed**
However on first try, I found out it has problem melting 1mm solder lead. The tip is simply not hot enough. At some point it seems that the surrounding area near the tip can melt the solder, but not the tip itself. Does this indicate that I have faulty unit?
Also which soldering iron is best to solder on a motherboard? My Relisys RWT200EM thin client (see this **broken link removed**) has a motherboard with an empty IDE connector. I read somewhere that if I solder an IDE connector to it and connect a hard disk, it should get detected. I have taken a few photos here:
Front of empty IDE connector:
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Back:
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I try both the 20W soldering iron and a brandless soldering iron that I always use to solder on veroboard, but they aren't hot enough to melt the existing solder for me to put the pin headers in.
Any advice? Thanks.