Uhm sadly I am not 100% sure what to suggest here. Sadly I live in a construction zone as of the moment so I have ample supplies but i will list things that I know do not work

Aluminum foil - To Brittle doesn't hold solder well and will break really fast
Soda can- Covered in chemicals smells when used and doesn't hold the solder either


If you can spend the money home depot or a local hardware store for a piece of copper might be best you wont need much just remember the size of what your working on and do not buy a ton and get it thin! an 1/8th of an inch is going to be to thick. you want something like a 16th or a 32nd of an inch thick.

I tend to have random broken electronics sitting around, so I just snipped off a small piece of metal (probably a battery contact) from one when I needed to perform this same repair that you're working on. I melted some solder onto the remains of the pad on the board, melted some onto the back of the piece of metal, then pressed them together and applied the iron to the top of the piece of metal. Since metal is luckily heat-conductive, the solder underneath eventually melted and bonded. Probably not the mechanically strongest bond ever, but that calcuator continues to work. If you need, I can search down which of the calculators in my collection has/have that repair and take some photographs.

Hey, Kerm, just saw your post after returning from Radio Shack. Picked up a double-sided copper pcb there, thinking I could possibly strip off some copper from one side of it to use as a bridge. We'll see. Thanks for the tip on putting solder on both pieces separately, then putting them together and reheating. Wasn't sure how I was going to hold everything while I soldered, since I didn't think to pick up any kind of clip to secure them. I am not very well equipped for even a simple procedure like this one. If you can find the time to track down one of your successful attempts I would certainly appreciate seeing it. Thanks. Oh, as an aside, I first went out this morning to Lowe's and bought a corner piece of what I thought was aluminum flashing for roofs, then found that it was non-conducting when I got home. Bummer!

Geekboy, I scraped green board to expose copper as you suggested on 2/27. I also scraped away some at the original copper pad where it was still a little grimy, and the whole thing was pretty shiny. Had continuity across many pairs of points over the whole pad after scraping. Couldn't contain myself, tried to solder a makeshift plate across the whole thing. Ended up looking like Mount Vesuvius. Actually held together and continuous from top to bottom, but probably a quarter inch tall! Was able to close cover except for the battery end which had slight gap. Tried turning it on, but no go. When I took it apart and jiggled the plate slightly the solder broke. No surprise. Glob of solder remained on scraped pad. Removed some of it and got to wondering why there had to be a new plate over this one in the first place. What, is there too much resistance in the solder for it to serve as the conducting plate? The real world is a hard place, I think I'll return to theory. Will attempt to replate again later this week. Still don't understand why "solder-plated" pad doesn't serve as a battery contact.

It would but generally you cant pipe enough solder down in the spot to get it to stay would be the issue. And the issue with it that time is the gap probably lifted the other pad off its contact.

Hmm, let me see if I have this right. If I have put enough solder down on the bad pad, that would probably make it so thick that the other contact would not reach down to make contact on the "good" pad? No, that's probably not what you mean, because I would have the same problem by putting a new plate down on the bad pad. I am bad confused. I mean, the contacts are the spring-like things that the batteries connect to, which then contact the pads to power the board when I replace the back cover, right? Sorry for being so thick-headed. I think I don't understand "lifted the other pad off its contact".

I understand that everyone leads busy lives, but the silence is deafening. Have I unwittingly committed a faux pax in my last post? To make myself clear, I am a self admitted know-nothing when it comes to electronics, but hoping to learn. The vocabulary/language/jargon is unfamiliar to me. I thought the "pads" were the bare copper plated areas where the battery terminals contacted the board. Is that wrong? If it is not wrong, how do I interpret "the gap probably lifted the other pad off its contact"? What created "the gap"? How could a pad "lift off" of a contact? The way my board stands now, it just has a thin coat of solder (no bridging plate) covering what I thought was the pad (cleaned up before soldering), but the calculator still does not turn on, even though it would appear that (what I thought were) the battery contacts are touching the pads. I am very confused, and apologize if I have inadvertently come off somehow as smart-alecky (although I would probably replace the word alecky with another shorter word beginning with "a" that I am not sure would be appropriate here) in my posts.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, maybe this will help.

http://mikewilkes-irsc.weebly.com/jpeg-images-damaged-pad-ti-84--se.html

The solder I would say is less than 1/16 " thick at thickest point. Looks like I may have overheated everything judging from the discoloration of the white area

That actually looks functional and "fine" (as in nothing looks damaged) next question that is my fault that I forgot to ask is there still a lead for the terminal Comming off the back cover? There should be 2 prongs ti touch the pads one each.

Yes, the two prongs are there. Those are what I have been calling the battery contacts, to distinguish from the pads that they touch. Also, forgot to mention that I tested the fuse for continuity, and it was OK. I am afraid to ask...what next?

Will wonders never cease?! I cleaned the soldered pad and put the calculator back together again a few minutes ago, followed the "remove one battery, press DEL key, replace battery" procedure, and lo and behold, the calculator turned on! Replaced OS using TI Connect and all seems to be well again! Kudos to geekboy and Kerm for standing by me, I would have lost hope long ago without their help. This website is awesome, worth its weight in gold! Thanks for getting me out of another jam.

Glad you got it working! And yeah always clean stuff probably should have mentioned that sorry! And no problem and thank you for being an awesome member! If you need anything else just make a thread or ask in chat if we have the time we are always willing (and if we were to print it all that'd be a lot of moolah!)

No doubt, I will be back again someday. Hey, with the knowledge you folks have, I would think you would be rolling in moolah! Hm, I say that, but I never got wealthy even though I spent a lot of time learning physics and math. Then again, there wasn't a lot of commercial use for the stuff I enjoyed and was interested in; but, what you have hands-on knowledge of is so useful in so many areas of science, engineering and technology. You will eventually find your niche, which may be doing exactly what you're doing now. My best to you in whatever you choose to do.

Congratulations, and that's great to hear that your calculator is working again! We are indeed always here if you or your students have questions with calculator usage or programming, general programming, or math and science. See you around!