TheWolfe

I'm wanting to replace my CD Drive led from green to red.

I've never soldered anything before, so I'm hoping that this experiment on a $20 piece of hardware will be the less risky, first experience of soldering =D

I've removed the tray and the main circuit board, along with the metal coverings.

Now I'm on to the smaller circuit board that tells the CDD to open when the button is pushed, and to turn the light on.

So, on this small board, there is:

A button
An led
A circle


The circle seems to be soldered ONTO the board itself. It's obviously the gear that turns to open the drive when the button is pushed. I guess I was hoping this small circuit board would be easy to take off. But now it seems that I can only rip it off, or I'll have to replace the LED while it's in this odd position.

I can sort of remove the small circuit board by releasing the plastic tab and pulling on it, as seen here. Only half of it leans outwards, but it gives me a small view inside.

How shall I proceed?

Also, what soldering tools will I need to buy?

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kevingreenbmx

good luck with that tight space... will be cool if you manage to do it. :-)

all you need is thin solder and a soldering iron. i also like to have some solder wick handy to soke up the old solder or incase i use to much solder, buy it is not essential.

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cathode

There are two tabs that hold the motor in which is soldered directly to the PCB you are trying to remove. Slightly bending the two tabs outwards will allow you to remove the motor cleanly.

See the attached picture...

Attached Thumbnails

 

CattleRustler

you really need to see which of those 4 pins is coming from the led, then desolder them, and replace with your led (assuming you know which leg is which). You might be able to see whats what by using one of thos small angled dental mirrors. Its like a small round mirror on the end of a toothbrush handle. They sell them at any drug store. It might help you see whats going on without removing the pcb.

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TheWolfe

Yeah I just figured this out 5 minutes ago and I actually got it free!
Ok, so here are the pics:


So what am I supposed to do? I'm new to soldering (never used them before, and I don't own any tools) but I hope replacing an LED is on the easy side.

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CattleRustler

ah, beautious
google vids for desoldering and soldering
the +/- is marked so the long leg on the led will go in +

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TheWolfe

I've tried looking it up and all I can find is how to solder leds onto resistors...can you help me out? This doesn't seem to use a resistor.

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Mjg1675

There will be a flat side on the LED, that is the NEGATIVE side, so put it in the NEGATIVE hole.

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Reflux

This is a good tutorial.

Soldering LED's is pretty much the same as soldering anything.

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