Quote from: goxed on September 10, 2013, 12:22:56 AM

Quote from: vs3 on September 09, 2013, 07:54:44 AM

Quote from: Doff on September 09, 2013, 04:22:06 AM

Quote from: jspielberg on September 09, 2013, 02:56:25 AM

Lol... the shopping list is getting longer... those sparkfun guys are going to love me.

The advice/recommendations are very much appreciated.

Hehe since your pictures are good if you wouldn't mind showing what this looks like after you have cut the traces and soldered anything that would be cool.

Just in case I need to do this in the future id like to see how its actually done.

See also this example: (source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=250249.msg3099241#msg3099241)

(although that is a bit of a overkill)

In essence - make a narrow cut (1mm) just enough so that you can visually tell that the traces have been cut apart and that should do it. It is also a good idea to keep the cut relatively small - in case it turns out that this is the wrong chip

(yes - believe me - Murphy's laws were not invented out of boredom!)

Be careful as once you cut the traces it would be relatively easy to grab an end and just peel the entire trace off. That's fine if you're sure you'll never ever need it again (but are you?)

You can also use a small piece of wire (any wire will do) to connect the points. Or make a large slump of solder and bridge them that way. I'd go with a wire though - much easier.

Sorry guys, idle board was money lost so did a quick fix trace cut. Any good tips on how to desolder the chip? looks like it's soldered to the board with the ground pad. I have a 50W Weller soldering station. Is it possible to easily desolder with a soldering iron or do I need hot air tools?

I don't think it would be an easy task unsoldering it. But then why would you want to do that in the first place? If you short the control signals (SCK/MOSI/MISO) then the chip will be bypassed and may use a bit of power but that's all. If you really want to cut the power - just cut all traces around it. You'll have just the ground pad left but that won't interfere with anything.