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power laptop with ac adapter through battery port

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Yeah, theres a few things that make it difficult to desolder parts from a modern high quality PCB.

1) ROHS solder. Melts at a much higher temp than 60/40 lead solder. Requires a higher temp iron, which means if its not temperature controlled, you're gonna have to leave your iron to heat up for a while.
2) Through-hole connections. Heating the bottom solder joint, in order to completely melt the solder all the way through the holeto the top, the heat has to conduct through the though-hole. Sometimes, by the time its done this, the bottom pad gets so hot it lifts off the PCB, ruining the connection.
3) With power components/connectors, as they are designed to work with a few amps, the traces are usually much wider, along with heavy use of ground plane without 'thermals'. This large area of copper will happy draw all your irons heat away from the connection, meaning you must pretty much get the entire ground-plane at a high temperature before your joint even begins to melt.


After owning quite afew cheaper irons over the years, I got a nice £40 temperature controlled 40W. Not that powerful, but its made life a LOT easier. I can even solder copper braid to pot casings (which usually requires a higher wattage iron).

As I said, attempting to desolder the connector 'as-is', is tough, so you should first break it. Doesn'ttake much to cut through the pins, so the connector comes off. Not only does this mean you only have to take the little pins out, but.... you now have a large area to put your iron on... a fllat tip, laid across the pad ensures maximum heat transfer, and so the solder should melt quickly, you tap, pins come out, job done. The longer it takes, the more damage you're gonna do to the board.

Worst case, you can always drill out the pins :D Solder is easy to drill through, although this does risk ruining the through-hole connections. As you can only solder on the bottom of the board (connector covers the top pad) any connections made to the top pad would be broken. - I will admit, its a lot harder than it sohuld be.

Ahh so you have a backup plan, but for now you're going for the 'interesting' way? good man! Although note, its not the battery pack you could damage (as you said, you can get another)... its the laptop. Even if you get all the voltages, and polarities correct, any damage to the data connections/electronics inside the laptop, and it night not accept any battery... Most laptops have various buck/boost regulators to provde all the voltages on board, from a battery voltage which varies quite a bit, these are controlled by the on board controller... which can turn them on/off. There aren't any 'direct connections' between battery power and the goods :(

Good luck though! Your findings could prove very handy for those in a similar position. That is a cheap laptop, which isn't worth the ridiculous prices some charge for repairs.

Blueteeth
 
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