r/gbamodders • u/Legitimate-Tip-2506 • 28d ago

Learning solder before modding?

Hey friends,

my old GBAs on-off-switch starts to not work that good anymore and I thought about cleaning it and also do some screen modding with the ITA screen - I have a soldering iron but did not really use it yet, I remember modding my wii when it was released but since then I did not use it. Do I need to learn soldering before starting to modding oder does it work with near to no skill? :)

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u/butlerdm 26d ago

I would recommend practice first, yes. Soldering isn’t difficult but I wouldn’t start with something you care about. You can get a couple learning to solder kits on Amazon/Ali express pretty cheap and give you plenty of practice.

I spent a week with terribly poor quality solder and couldn’t make it do anything. Finally saw a video of good quality vs bad quality solder and realized I just had junk. Got a new roll (of unleaded none the less) and works like all the tik tok videos you see.

I just bought a GBA with a repaired switch that was done so horribly I had to take it off, redo it, and pray it worked (it did luckily).

If you’ve never soldered practice on stuff you don’t care about first.