Folks, big news: the caps came in, and I was getting impatient from the desoldering gun not arriving, so I started work by hand.

The first two removals were tragic, and I actually did some damage to the board's coating in the common ground area; fortunately, it was nothing that I couldn't fix using my wife's nail polish. Then I replaced the SRG caps used for power delivery, and it turns out those were the issue: the card has now come back to life.

Now, I did make a goof and order bipolar 16v 100uf for the power section instead of polarised, but since they're not in the audio path I figured they'd be fine; it turned out okay in the end.

I would be happy just the way things are, but since I'm an idiot the other caps are probably on their last legs too, I am going to press on and replace the rest as well. Wish me luck!

BeastOfSoda wrote on 2021-07-02, 17:13:

The first two removals were tragic, and I actually did some damage to the board's coating in the common ground area; fortunately, it was nothing that I couldn't fix using my wife's nail polish.

That's why it's a good idea to practice soldering on boards where you don't care how they look after working on them. You can fix most torn and burnt traces, but the board might look ugly afterwards. As long as your CT2230 is inside a (non-transparent) computer case, and it sounds good, no one is gonna see the tragedy, so I think it is fine as it is.

BeastOfSoda wrote on 2021-07-02, 17:13:

Then I replaced the SRG caps used for power delivery, and it turns out those were the issue: the card has now come back to life.

Now, I did make a goof and order bipolar 16v 100uf for the power section instead of polarised, but since they're not in the audio path I figured they'd be fine; it turned out okay in the end.

Bipolar capacitor often compromise on electric properties (like ESR or linearity). You don't care about linearity on bypass caps, and if you verified that tan delta isn't significantly worse on the bipolar replacement caps, you are good to go as is. General advice is to avoid bipolar electrolytics unless that property is definitely needed in a circuit, though.

Congrats on the successful repair!

Welp, I should've quit while I was ahead. I managed to kill and revive the board twice; let me explain.

While swapping out the op amp section of the caps, I did too much at once and I was getting no more sound; turns out that I simply forgot to add back a couple of caps, and all was good.

Then I moved on to some of the smaller ones, managed to do more damage to the shielding and as a result I was getting no more FM. Some more wifely nail polish, a couple of hail Marys and a billion curses later, I had that fixed up too, thankfully.

Now I still do have maybe twenty smaller caps left unchanged, however I'm certain I will be excused for electing not to futz with the card anymore and leave it in a battered, but working state. One thing's for sure, I am leaning more and more towards the philosophy of not fixing something that ain't broken; I am so clumsy that it's a miracle I haven't turned that poor card into an irrepairable scrap, and I will only be doing maintenance on it if I really need to.

Thanks everyone for the help and encouragement, it was a fun learning experience nonetheless.

Sorry to hear about the troubles, but glad you got it working. Congrats! If any of the rest of the original caps act up in the future, well you've already got the replacements. If I could make a suggestion: put the rest all in one container (or ziplock bag, or whatever) and make a clear label of what they're for. At this point you might think there's no way you'd forget. But, trust me, your future self will thank you.

Regarding clumsiness, I'm sure part of that was nerves at doing it for the first time, and also just getting used to the equipment. Though there is one major factor that may have played a key role in the steadiness of your hands that I am kicking myself for not mentioning before now. Do you drink coffee, tea, or any anything with caffeine in it? Caffeine can majorly effect the steadiness of your hands, and it's something most people never realize until they try and do something really precise like this. If you're a regular coffee drinker like me, try skipping it on any day you want to do some soldering. You'd be amazed how much easier it is. Just gotta watch out for the inevitable headache from the lack of your daily dose.

As for accidentally scratching some of the solder mask off a bit of the ground plane, that's not really something to worry about. So long as you didn't actually cut through a trace, it shouldn't be an issue. Especially if we're talking about a ground plane. There's lots of that - and if you somehow severed part of that's necessary, you could solder a wire to reconnect it. Anyway, the only real danger I can think of to scratching the solder mask off is that the bare copper could possibly rust if exposed to enough moisture. But, yeah, if you're worried about it, you did the right thing by covering it.

Oh, and one other thing from an earlier post. Regarding flux, you don't really need a lot. If you've got a flux pen and it puts enough there for you to see, it's probably enough. Like I mentioned earlier in the thread, I prefer to use No-Clean because it's not so dirty (it is fully liquid). But there certain cases where an actual paste makes more sense. Just gotta do more cleanup after. Also, most solder these days has at least some amount of flux built into it. So technically you could get away without using flux at all. Even so, I usually end up using some anyhow. Just makes everything easier. Especially with really old solder on an old PCB that's been sitting for decades (and extra-especially with old solder that is gunked up with dead-capacitor-juice).

Kyosho wrote on 2021-07-03, 04:47:

Sorry to hear about the troubles, but glad you got it working. Congrats! If any of the rest of the original caps act up in the f […]
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Sorry to hear about the troubles, but glad you got it working. Congrats! If any of the rest of the original caps act up in the future, well you've already got the replacements. If I could make a suggestion: put the rest all in one container (or ziplock bag, or whatever) and make a clear label of what they're for. At this point you might think there's no way you'd forget. But, trust me, your future self will thank you.

Regarding clumsiness, I'm sure part of that was nerves at doing it for the first time, and also just getting used to the equipment. Though there is one major factor that may have played a key role in the steadiness of your hands that I am kicking myself for not mentioning before now. Do you drink coffee, tea, or any anything with caffeine in it? Caffeine can majorly effect the steadiness of your hands, and it's something most people never realize until they try and do something really precise like this. If you're a regular coffee drinker like me, try skipping it on any day you want to do some soldering. You'd be amazed how much easier it is. Just gotta watch out for the inevitable headache from the lack of your daily dose.

As for accidentally scratching some of the solder mask off a bit of the ground plane, that's not really something to worry about. So long as you didn't actually cut through a trace, it shouldn't be an issue. Especially if we're talking about a ground plane. There's lots of that - and if you somehow severed part of that's necessary, you could solder a wire to reconnect it. Anyway, the only real danger I can think of to scratching the solder mask off is that the bare copper could possibly rust if exposed to enough moisture. But, yeah, if you're worried about it, you did the right thing by covering it.

Oh, and one other thing from an earlier post. Regarding flux, you don't really need a lot. If you've got a flux pen and it puts enough there for you to see, it's probably enough. Like I mentioned earlier in the thread, I prefer to use No-Clean because it's not so dirty (it is fully liquid). But there certain cases where an actual paste makes more sense. Just gotta do more cleanup after. Also, most solder these days has at least some amount of flux built into it. So technically you could get away without using flux at all. Even so, I usually end up using some anyhow. Just makes everything easier. Especially with really old solder on an old PCB that's been sitting for decades (and extra-especially with old solder that is gunked up with dead-capacitor-juice).

Boy, where to start.

About the parts, I've got my grounds covered: Digikey was awesome enough to send everything already nicely labelled In blister bags, which has been a lifesaver in sorting through components and speeding up the task. I am fairly well organized anyway, so I would probably have ended up doing just that.

About caffeine, I don't drink any, so I didn't have that issue; maybe the problem is just that I don't know what I'm doing, but eventually I did get a little bit faster, especially when removing caps. I am also certain that my technique is all wrong: I have read around that you're not supposed to touch the iron when actually soldering, but that you must instead heat the leg and the eyelet enough to melt the tin on them, which I just cannot make happen.

At one point, I was also having a lot of issues with getting my solder to stick to the part: I believe it was due to a combination of there being too much flux (I just didn't have the no clean stuff on hand, only solid rosin), the iron being basically blackened at that point (I was managing to only tin the very tip) and overall clumsiness/tiredness. I did try lowering the iron's temperature, but the solder would either just disappear, or stick to parts of the leg not caked in flux. It was a pretty horrifying mess, and I do have quite a bit of cleanup to do...

BeastOfSoda wrote on 2021-07-03, 10:58:

the iron being basically blackened at that point (I was managing to only tin the very tip)

In that state, you have to clean the tip.Trying to work with an iron in that state is plain torture, easily messes up things but rarely gets things done. Depending on the type of tip you have, there are two different approaches: If you have a quality iron with a "permanent" tip (even those will wear off), the tip is coated with a durable inert silver-looking layer, which you do not want to destroy. A good way to clean permanent tips is gently scraping them with a blunt metal piece. On the other hand, if you have a cheap copper-only tip, you can just grind the grime away until the tip is copper-colored again.

Most likely, the black stuff on your tip was burnt rosin, so lowering the temperature was a good idea. If you have a temperature-controller iron, you usually shouldn't go above 320°C for soldering of delicate electronic stuff. You might need to increase the temperature a bit (up to 360°C) when you are soldering to big traces or even ground planes, but turn the termperature back when you are done. If your tip is dirty, you can counteract the bad effectiveness by increasing the temperature, but this only works so-so, and burns rosin at the tip even faster. Resist the urge to just increate the temperature if the tip gets dirty, clean the tip instead. You recover the time spent for cleaning the tip easily during the next couple of solder connections.

mkarcher wrote on 2021-07-03, 20:38:

BeastOfSoda wrote on 2021-07-03, 10:58:

the iron being basically blackened at that point (I was managing to only tin the very tip)

In that state, you have to clean the tip.Trying to work with an iron in that state is plain torture, easily messes up things but rarely gets things done. Depending on the type of tip you have, there are two different approaches: If you have a quality iron with a "permanent" tip (even those will wear off), the tip is coated with a durable inert silver-looking layer, which you do not want to destroy. A good way to clean permanent tips is gently scraping them with a blunt metal piece. On the other hand, if you have a cheap copper-only tip, you can just grind the grime away until the tip is copper-colored again.

Most likely, the black stuff on your tip was burnt rosin, so lowering the temperature was a good idea. If you have a temperature-controller iron, you usually shouldn't go above 320°C for soldering of delicate electronic stuff. You might need to increase the temperature a bit (up to 360°C) when you are soldering to big traces or even ground planes, but turn the termperature back when you are done. If your tip is dirty, you can counteract the bad effectiveness by increasing the temperature, but this only works so-so, and burns rosin at the tip even faster. Resist the urge to just increate the temperature if the tip gets dirty, clean the tip instead. You recover the time spent for cleaning the tip easily during the next couple of solder connections.

Yup, I have a cheap Chinese knock-off soldering station so I don't mind damaging it too much if it comes to that; even then, what I did before storing it was to use some model-grade, 800 grit sandpaper to scrape off most of the black residue. It's not aggressive enough to cause actual damage to the tip, as it's designed for working with soft plastic, and the result came out decent. I didn't try to shine it back up, because that would have meant the risk of removing more material than I was comfortable with.

I think the issue boils down to having used solid rosin: even after attempting to clean the tip via wet sponge and brass wool, the stuff would refuse to go away. In the end I should have been more patient and wait for the good stuff I ordered to arrive, but I am sure I will make good use of it when I get around to mangling my two Genesis consoles.

I would also like to ask a few pointers about emptying up solder from the eyelets, as I noticed I was experiencing a lot of issues in cleaning them up (using a combination of manual solder pump and braided wick, hence why I abused the rosin in the first place; in the end I resorted to methods that I don't even wanna mention). Any suggestions there?

BeastOfSoda wrote on 2021-07-03, 21:40:

I would also like to ask a few pointers about emptying up solder from the eyelets, as I noticed I was experiencing a lot of issues in cleaning them up (using a combination of manual solder pump and braided wick, hence why I abused the rosin in the first place; in the end I resorted to methods that I don't even wanna mention). Any suggestions there?

Old solder doesn't flow well. Adding rosin might help, so that idea isn't that bad. If you have rosin core solder, add fresh solder to the eyelet, have it melt and suck it again with the pump. If the eyelet is connected to a ground plane, you need power, I recommend at least 30 watts. I had no success trying to clean out eyelets on a multilayer PCB with a 15W iron. Don't bother trying that with a fine tip, it won't be able to transfer the heat fast enough to the eyelet. You need a bigger chisel-shaped tip or a bevel tip. If you don't have anything else, a blunt conical tip might work, too.

The next important thing: Make sure the manual pump actually pumps well enough. You can open the pump, and you regularly need to clean an lubricate the rubber seal. To find out whether your pump needs cleaning: Close the tip by putting a finger to it, and activate pump. It should hold some vacuum for some seconds, so if you remove the finger afterwards, you should hear and feel some air going in. If the pump releases fully with your finger on the tip, it leaks too much air.

mkarcher wrote on 2021-07-04, 07:15:

BeastOfSoda wrote on 2021-07-03, 21:40:

I would also like to ask a few pointers about emptying up solder from the eyelets, as I noticed I was experiencing a lot of issues in cleaning them up (using a combination of manual solder pump and braided wick, hence why I abused the rosin in the first place; in the end I resorted to methods that I don't even wanna mention). Any suggestions there?

Old solder doesn't flow well. Adding rosin might help, so that idea isn't that bad. If you have rosin core solder, add fresh solder to the eyelet, have it melt and suck it again with the pump. If the eyelet is connected to a ground plane, you need power, I recommend at least 30 watts. I had no success trying to clean out eyelets on a multilayer PCB with a 15W iron. Don't bother trying that with a fine tip, it won't be able to transfer the heat fast enough to the eyelet. You need a bigger chisel-shaped tip or a bevel tip. If you don't have anything else, a blunt conical tip might work, too.

The next important thing: Make sure the manual pump actually pumps well enough. You can open the pump, and you regularly need to clean an lubricate the rubber seal. To find out whether your pump needs cleaning: Close the tip by putting a finger to it, and activate pump. It should hold some vacuum for some seconds, so if you remove the finger afterwards, you should hear and feel some air going in. If the pump releases fully with your finger on the tip, it leaks too much air.

I apologize for not replying sooner, as I had set aside the soldering equipment in hopes of forgetting about its existence for a few days; as grateful as I am for the incredible amount of help I've been receiving on the topic, I am still in the camp of those who get stressed out by the act of soldering, while still recognizing its necessity and the importance of doing it properly. I could not thank you guys enough for that, and I'll be sure to reference this thread for a long time coming.

With that said, I have been aware of the new on old solder technique, and I have used it with decent results; sometimes the caps would just pop off on their own, but in other cases I've still had to pry them off while somehow heating the solder from the other side. It doesn't look like I can consistently remove it just yet, and the eyelets still need cleanup after that; my station is labelled as 90w, but who knows how far off the mark that estimate is (we are taking about a Chinese knock-off, after all). I did use a medium chisel tip, which I found especially helpful in heating up both solder joints at once.

As for the pump, I followed your suggestion and did the compression test, if you will: while it did seem to hold air just fine, I decided to take it apart anyway, and sure enough there was a fair amount of solder deposit in there. I cleaned it up with water and some paper, dried it as best as possible and lubricated the shaft and O ring with a generous helping of boron nitride compound, which is normally used for lubricating electric motors and plastic gears (come to think of it, I should also service the CD drive the same way). While compression has stayed the same, I do feel it a little bit smoother now; hopefully, I will not have to use it again when my electric solder sucker arrives, but at least it's in working order if I ever need it in a pinch.

BeastOfSoda wrote on 2021-07-05, 20:47:

With that said, I have been aware of the new on old solder technique, and I have used it with decent results; sometimes the caps would just pop off on their own, but in other cases I've still had to pry them off while somehow heating the solder from the other side. It doesn't look like I can consistently remove it just yet, and the eyelets still need cleanup after that; my station is labelled as 90w, but who knows how far off the mark that estimate is (we are taking about a Chinese knock-off, after all). I did use a medium chisel tip, which I found especially helpful in heating up both solder joints at once.

The issue you describe sounds very much like the eyelids you can't easily clean not getting hot enough. The inconsistent results most likely are caused by the fact that some caps are used for DC blocking in the audio path. They are connected to thin traces carrying audio signals. You should have no problems desoldering them and cleaning up the eyelids. On the other hand, other caps are used for power supply decoupling, and are connected to a wide +5V rail and the GND plane on the SB16. Ground planes are the worst enemy of the solderer, because they are large copper surfaces that quickly draw away the heat from the point you heat, and radiate it from the whole area of the ground plane. I use to call groundplanes "heatsinks for solder connections". The only thing that helps against ground planes (or power planes like +5V planes, you won't find a +5V plane on an SB16, though) is putting in heat even faster than the ground plane can pull the heat away. That's where you need raw power. 90W should be more than enough, most likely even 50W will do for a soundblaster card.

You should be aware that a 90W station doesn't continously deliver 90W, but the temperature controller pulses the 90W heating power on and off, such that the temperature sensor is at the set temperature. In cheap soldering stations, the temperature sensor is far away from the tip, near the heater inside the iron. If you set your station to 360°C (which is a fine setting on half decent stations if you are desoldering from ground planes), and you touch the eyelid with the iron, you should see/hear the heater being on most of the time. If it is only turned on for short pulses, the heating power is way lower than 90W. This would indicate that the heater still has the desired temperature, but the temperature just doesn't get from the heater to the board. This might be due to a too small tip that conducts head badly (unlikely if you use a medium chisel, though), a badly mounted tip that doesn't pick up the heat from the heater, or a dirty or dry tip that is unable to transfer the heat from the tip to the eyelid. To get the eyelid and the board hot enough to clean it up, use fresh solder as heat conductor between the tip and the eyelid, wait for a couple of seconds for the board to get hot, draw the soldering tip a bit to the side and put the pump tip directly over the hole and trigger the pump. Don't be afraid of touching the soldering iron tip. The pump tips are quite heat resistant, and need to be treated as consumables, they should be inexpensive to replace.

Problems getting heat to the PCB might be caused by cheap solder with bad flux. You might want to try a different brand of solder (preferable the old leaded type). In my experience, no-name solder as provided in cheap soldering kits can be considerably less effective for melting old connections than branded solder. Of course, as pointed out above, the problems with heat transfer are not necessarily between tip and PCB, but it might also be rooted in a bad quality solder station, where the heat doesn't get properly from the heater to the tip. If you have a thermocouple-based temperature measurement device that is able to measure +350°C, you might want to verify tip temperature or solder temperature on the connection you try to desolder to find out whether it gets hot enough.

Hello all,
I also have 2230 and want to recap it.
But I cannot find the brand and spec of caps @BeastOfSoda mentioned.
So what caps(brand sand specs) you suggest?