I might have been having some trouble getting the time I wanted in the demo for Mirror’s Edge, which if you haven’t already I suggest you check this game out. The end result is that a controller might have received the brunt of this frustration with the game.

I have several broken controllers in my basement. Jo and I bought them a while ago in order to take the cases and see if we could dye, paint, or do something to change the color on a more permanent basis. I believe the final verdict was no – everything eventually rubs off. What I am left with though is a plethora of parts to cannibalize in cases like this where I need to fix something.

This was basically the first time I soldered anything. I watched Jo do the LED’s when we were changing LED’s on controllers, which was a huge success, but I only helped a little. This was different. This was a piece of hardware held on to the board by about a dozen points.

I went to a local store and bought about $20 in supplies. I needed solder, wick (which is basically this braided copper wire that is supposed to take solder off boards), a vacuum gun (you push the handle in and it sucks the solder off the board when you press the button), and a solder gun holder, since I just had the really cheap one that came with my solder gun.

That accomplished I set about my task. I started to remove the piece that broke. I put on another piece from another controller. Everything went slowly and I sort of learned how to do certain things. Put the controller back together, and sure enough the piece that I took was broken. It’s the right analog stick, so it controls in FPS games which way you look, and this piece wants to look up.

Back to the basement I take another piece from another controller, and this time it went a little faster. I was starting to get the hang of taking pieces off boards. I put the controller back together, brought it upstairs, and this time it was a success. The controller is working perfectly now. I’m glad it was that piece and not my solder job or something else, because I wouldn’t have known where to begin checking the solder.

I feel very accomplished today.

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