Got this keyboard from a friend that needed to get rid of it. When it arrived it wasn’t working on initial plug in, tried several usb ports and cables and nothing worked.
I opened it up and looks like this part of the board got ripped off maybe during shipping, it wasn’t packaged the best.
Just trying to see if this can be repaired and what specific part this is thanks!
Could you send pictures on different angles ?
It is difficult to understand what is happening with this only picture.
Hey Rico, what other angles would help you see the problem? The pins pulled out of the dip switch board should look like this, just wondering if it’s possible to fix with new pins or something.
I may start to understand the problem.
A connector has been ripped off his daughter board right?
Do you have closeup picture of the daughter board where the connector was soldered ?
At first glance it looks like copper pads have also been ripped off, and even part of traces.
This does not look good to be honest, as just soldering a new connector will probably not be possible.
yikes. That is definitely repairable by someone skilled at PCB repair because it looks like every pad still has a trace you could connect to (although a couple in the bottom right of the photo have started ripping out. HOWEVER… it really needs to be secured well once the pads are reconnected to their traces just because of how the connector has stress put on it when assembling/disassembling.
I watch a lot of PCB repair Youtube content. I’ve seen similar things happen when people rip off the fan connectors on their Playstations. Definitely fixable, but definitely not easy without skill and tools.
Here’s a somewhat similar problem and the fix. The disc drive board connector got ripped off and he shows it around 2:40. He starts the repair around 4:39. He’s very skilled and manages to make mounting point for the connector. This is where I would probably resort to super glue or hot glue, lol. Your repair will actually be a bit easier because the traces are all around the component and easy to get to, with nothing running underneath.
Here is a fan connector ripped off:
neither of these gives you an exact fix but you’ll start to see the technique of removing solder mask to get at traces. That’s the biggest issue (well, and getting good magnification equipment)
How much experience do you have with repairs? It would be fun to try to fix it, but if you are a novice, it’s likely out of your league to fix.
Maybe @Dave has a spare stock daughter board he’s not using that you could buy on the cheap? He developed an aftermarket PCB for this case that doesn’t use the stock DB, so he might actually have one around.
I just started tinkering and learning about this in general so I agree it has been fun looking around and finding and would like to fix it myself.
I have a friend that has a soldering set up at his job that’s going to help me with the repair but at the moment I’ve just been reading up and gathering information. I originally thought I fried the smaller pcb cus I cleaned everything when I got it and thought maybe some liquid got in there.
Thanks again for all the help this has all been fascinating, do you think I would be able to use a TraceTech conducting pen to try and repair the trace part and then clean up the connector and resolder?
I have looked at Dave’s thread and I’ve looked up maybe even getting a BLE980M but it seems like the interest for this keyboard has died down a bit and not many of those daughterboards are floating around anymore
I’ve always used wire to fix things that can’t just be solder bridged, so I’m not sure.
@pixelpusher analysis is right.
This can be done, but needs to be skilled at soldering.
See the two holes underneath the connector and on the PCB?
The connector was rivetted or screwed to the PCB for a better mechanical strength but those rivets or screws broke.
You may also want to look at something like these trace repair pens to help make things easier
i would say as long as the black connector can be removed from the main pcb, you might be able to replace the entire square secondary db by scalping a diff 980m’s old parts for it. i think you just need to replace the square db with the dipswitches on it.
That would indeed be easier
I was thinking that pen if I couldn’t find a replacement stock one, seemed like the easiest thing or skipping the entire middle plate if possible. Dave came through in a PM with some help though thanks everyone, might have this thing up and running again.
I too want to see how the solder repair would go, but man it’s pretty tiny and iffy.
