Saturday, March 17, 2007

A hand-me-down life

I'm pleased with myself because I was able to fix Dean's GPS which he recently gave to us. The GPS worked perfectly excepting that its USB connector had broken off. This meant that (1) you couldn't connect it to your computer, and (2) you could only power it through batteries.

Fixing it amounted to soldering the connector back on, although this was not a simple procedure. The connecting wires were densely enough packed that it was difficult to make contact with only a single wire (the connector is a Mini-B), and I think that my soldering skill improved during the operation. Of particular importance is the fact that I didn't destroy any of the other components on the board during my soldering---at least it seems this way so far.

In retrospect I am disappointed that I did not take pictures to document the procedure.