Keyboard hacking...

[Beley]

About desoldering the connector:
I sugust that you cut off most of the connector befor you try desoldering it, it will make the job about 20x easier some side cutters(ie wire clippers) would do the job.  you will still be left with the bottoms of each pin still soldered into the PCB which you will have to desolder.

[jerryjanis]

Well...gues what? I screwed it up and its dead! I got it unsoldered, but the new solder wouldn't stick to the PCB!

Can you post a pic?  Maybe there's a way to save it..

[EndTwist]

I don't think there is any feasable way to save it, but I'll post a pic ASAP.

[grafixmonkey]

If you were soldering to any of the copper traces or resoldering any of the already-soldered points, you may have overheated and dissolved the existing copper into your solder ball.  I had this happen with a pcb or two...  it resulted in nothing left to solder to.  Careful how many times you resolder a point and how long you leave the solder melted before backing off.

Oh, and get thinner solder if you're using it for this kinda stuff.  The stuff you have will glob on thick real fast.

[grafixmonkey]

Their electronic parts area is shrinking by the day, and none of the sales staff knows anything about electronics anymore.

They ever knew anything about electronics?  
When I was a kid, I'd go there asking for a 1/4" stereo to stereo minijack adapter for headphones, and would usually be given the wrong part - often a 1/4" mono to stereo minijack or something of that sort.

Unfortunately, there are no other nationwide mass-market electronic parts retailers.

Just mail order.  Now that I've graduated and I can't get stuff from my university's awesome EE store anymore, I'm going to have to start building parts-lists to meet the minimum orders on newark.com and digikey.com.  Happ actually carries a very nice selection of advanced components, even a hefty line of 7400 chips.  You guys could probably find lots of good stuff there, and meet the minimum order by adding arcade parts.

[Chris]

Just mail order.

Yeah, the problem is mail order's gonna kill you shipping for small parts.  I'm glad Radio Shack has some basic components left; I would hate to have to pay $6.00 in shipping next time I realized I was out of 220u resistors....

--Chris

[grafixmonkey]

Was talking about the stuff that nobody can get in town, like discreet laser diodes, LED displays, the specific 7400 chip you need.  That's why I mentioned the parts lists - if I have a wish list of stuff I know I'll use eventually, if I need something else right away I can add stuff from that list to the order and not waste as much.