Soldering a new ZIF connector to board

[valleycomputersphx]

This is my fist time posting here and I wanted to get some tech help with a soldering job I am about to perform on my Toshiba A505 laptop. This motherboard is designed to allow a backlit keyboard. This connector is a second ribbon on the back of the keyboard with 4 pins /on it and goes into a zif connector. While a lot of the A505 models already have the connector present on the board, mine does not, but the good is that the pins and the pad are there to solder the connector to. I just received my soldering iron which is a pencil type at 35watts, and the zif connector which I got from Digikey Electronics. Now on the motherboard where the connector goes, there is 2 solder points on the far left and right, and then 4 pins in the middle which are 1mm apart from each other. are the points on the left and right what holds the zif connector to the board ? Do I solder those two points first and then each individual pin ? Also there is already a good dab of solder on each pin or point, do I need extra solder, or do I position the connector and just touch each solder point for a few seconds ?? This is my first solder job, but I have done a lot of research on adding this keyboard and others have done this mod as well. Any help would be great ... I've included a photo of the board, the first one with the keyboard connector circled in red is the keyboard connector, and the backlit connector is just to the right. The second photo is a board with the pins and pad but no connector.

Spoiler

http://valleycomputersphx.com/a505.html

Thanks

Tim

 

[jarotech]

First I will remove the solder from the pads, put your connector on the board and solder the far left and right pads first with solder, after you solder the remaining 4 pins, but use solder with flux inside. But be sure you have all the components on the motherboard for your backlight keyboard already on the motherboard.

 

[valleycomputersphx]

Thanks very much for the information. Now when you say remove the solder, are you talking about the 4 solder points on the board where the pins from the connector go on?? I'm thinking that I can just heat one at a time up and solder the connector to the existing solder points. There has never been a connector on this board, but the 4 solder points are there for a connector, as well as a left/right solder point for the connector. http://valleycomputersphx.com/a505.html

 

[jarotech]

It is easier to solder directly to the trace, you said that you have a dab of solder on each pin, if you don't have too much and your connector is level then leave the solder. You can't just apply heat to solder the connector to the board, you need flux also, you can apply to the traces some flux or it will be inside in the center of the solder. You can google to see how to solder properly, you have many sites who tell you how to solder.