my one minute guide (not responsible for any damage to your system. Use at your own risk).
Blue LED in your Duo
Essential tools:
1) Solder Iron - with fine tip - radio shack, or other source (I use a high end model personally)
2) Desolder iron - about $15 from Radio Shack
3) Blue LED from ebay (don't bother with the overpriced garbage at Radio Shack) - I paid like $5 for a bag of 50. I can link you guys the one I have if needed (and will update the specs)
4) Needle nose pliers
5) spool of solder
6) small flathead screwdrive (like the watch repair type)
7) rubbing alcohol - 50%
1) get the security bit to open the duo (you should know that by now, do some searching)
2) remove the metal sheild plate on your Duo - first remove the screws holding it down. There are two I believe. If this is your first time you might have to desolder the plate from the controller port
3) if plate is soldered to the controller port go to a, otherwise skip to 4
a) Plug in your desolder iron, let it warm up. While that is heating up you are going to use your solder iron and heat up the old solder. This stiff was made almost 20 years ago, so heat that sucker up. I also sometimes add some solder and make some globs
b) now you will use your desolder iron that was heating up. A suggestion is to add a little solder to the tip and "tin" the iron. Squeeze the ball on the desolder iron (note be very careful on following these instructions) put the tip to your solder glob that is connecting the controller port shiled to the main shield. As you see the solder liquifying, slowly let the ball expand - this acts as a vacuum and sucks up the solder. Only do this one time, move the desolder iron away from your duo, and then give the ball a few "pumps." This spits out the solder that you sucked up, takes a few tries sometimes. What you don't to do is try to pump up the solder more than once over your Duo since that can spit out solder onto your system (not good). So do as I say and just take it slowly.
c) if this doesn't work, you can also try to use your main solder iron and just heat and lift the shield (but note the shield can get how)
4) Ok - now the shield is off you should notice a screw on the right side of the hucard slot. Remove this. Ok all screws holding down the Duo motherboard should be removed now.
5) Remove the wires connecting the Motherboard to the laser lens assembly. Carefully disconnect (small flat heads can help). Just go slowly. If you have a U.S. Duo there will be a Ceramic capacitor holding some wires down, you can carefully bend up to move these wires (I am not sure the function of this capacitor, if it is just there to hold down wires).
NOTE - my mod tip is I actually didn't disconnect because to me it is kind of a pain, I actually hold teh system on the side carefully, and lift the MB from the bottom plastic. I do the following step by lifting the board slighty up and sticking the desolder iron under the MB. Not for the faint of heart but it worked for me.
6) - ok let's take a look at the LED. Take a look at the location of where your Red light indicator is on the outside of your duo case (surface LED is in the same position on the board). The light is mounted to the right of the controller plug. You can't miss it - the ugly red LED. NOTE - notice the direction of the pins that are inside the LED. It should look something like this:
----
|I 7|
|| ||
-----
From viewing from the front of your duo - you will notice a long skinny single pin onthe left side (looking inside the LED) and then on the right side a thicker pin that looks like it is forming a 7 (you will see what I mean). Remember how this is oriented, you are going to mount the new LED in the same way. The thicker leg is the + terminal, and you can even see the board is marked +.
In the pic above it will be to the right of the Orange Capacitor (yours is going to look different, that was a replacement). You can see the holes where my red LED used to be. We are going to desolder that sucker and lift it out!
7) - ok so now we will go under the board. You will see two legs from the LED popping out. First I suggest adding a little extra solder to each leg. This makes desoldering it easier. Now take your desolder iron and suck that solder up. You can tell when you sucked it up good (if you don't see a hole or space near the leg, there is still solder holding it in. You can't just lift this thing out, you risk damaging the PSB preventing you from having an LED at all. Keep soldering / desoldering until you see a nice gap next to the leg.
-8) Besides the two legs being soldered to the board, there are two plastic clips holding this LED down. Use your tiny flathead screwdrive and carefully push them back a little so when you lift it will come out. There are two other things you can do here:
Use the needle nose pliers (this might provide better control) or you can use your solder iron and carefully melt the plastic. If you use the solder iron to melt make sure you really clean your solder iron before laying down solder again.
9) ok now back to the top part of the board - we are going to wrestly with this LED until it comes out. Grab your needle nose pliers and try lifting the LED up from the board. I grabbed it from the top and just slightly twisted left then right then up. It took a couple of tries - the main thing is make sure that you got almost all the solder removed from the bottom of the board. If there is a little left that is fine, but if one of those legs is soldered good it won't come out easy. I destroyed the LED while removing but it doesn't matter, I won't use this one again. You can also break the plastic on the bottom of the LED and then cut the legs (this makes it easier to remove and then you just have to yank the legs). Now you can see the holes where the new LED will go:
10) - ok so see the first pic originally shown - now use some rubbing alcohol and swabs to clean the area up. Use 50% rubbing alcohol (if you have 70%, make sure you water it down, too strong can start damaging the board). If you want to play it safe you can add a little water to the 50% (but it should be fine). Just clean up, then use a swab to dry.
11) So now you mount your new LED. LED's are directional. Step 6 you should have taken note on the LED orientation (if not, go back and read 6). Ok now the pins on your LED are probably too long - you need to cut the legs off, you don't want too short, and not too long. Cut them a little bigger than 1/8" and then test fit. You don't want it hitting the metal sheild under the duo, but you want them long enough that you can solder below.
12 ) solder the suckers!
13 ) enjoy
Disregard the missing caps - I was multi-tasking
