Saitek Eclipse II repair

[Jarrastafari]

Noob alert!

I currently have this keyboard but it's been out of service for a good year now.

I have opened it up before and found that the cable which is attached to the circuit board has come loose. I will try to upload a picture soon.

I'm feeling brave, so I was thinking of getting a simple soldering iron (such as this) and trying to reattach the wire myself.

What I would like to know is if this will work or am I trying the wrong thing?

I also have some headphones which seem to have cable damage but I have yet to open them up; any advice?

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EDIT: opened it up now for a picture and it turns out I have no idea what is wrong.

I thought there was damage to the solder but it's not soldered from what I can tell. Don't know what I was remembering!

Th keyboard doesnt work when I plug it in but if I wiggle the cable around it will eventually light up for a second then go off again.

Any ideas?

 

[Kei]

That's a cable fracture. You'd need to chop the cable back with some proper wire cutters and then re-crimp the correct wires to the connector inside the keyboard. In principal you can get around having to crimp the connectors by desoldering the header and soldering the wires directly into the pcb. The screen of the looks like the bit splitting off to the right would need to be redone too.

You need to be fairly adept at soldering to do this kind of work though as pcb's can be a bit delicate. It'd be wise to get some practice on something that you don't care about. Also note that solder can spit hot flux, so covering the membrane would be a very good idea, to avoid damaging it. Taking too long usually results in melted plastic, lifted pcb tracks and burnt fingers.

It's a similar story for headphones, though it can be problematic if the break is at the headphone end or in the middle of the wire. I had to replace the plug on my AKG's after the wire broke just in the strain relief boot. This is the wiring config of a TRS/jack plug.

 

[Jarrastafari]

What a champion!

Thanks a lot al give it a go soon as.