Some time ago a colleague from my work gave me a fried populated ESS9018 DIYINHK pcb. Well, he has already removed the dac itself.
I was quite intimidated by the prospect of soldering an expensive chip with so tiny legs. I considered buying another board with ESS9018K2M.
I mentioned the project to my father, who suggested he could ask the people from his former lab whether they would solder the chip for me.
I ordered the chip and it got soldered in. The quartz has been replaced as well.
Unfortunately, the dac would not work. I pretty quickly purchased the Bus Pirate and was pretty relieved that the chip was not totally dead. It actually talked to the bus pirate. I asked at diyaudio. People suggested I should check the contacts between the pins and vias. Again easier said than done.
After more session with the bus pirate I concluded that the sampling frequency was 0. People at diyaudio suggested that there was no incoming signal. At that stage I started poking the legs of the chip with my meter. I actually attached some sewing pins to my meter's probes. Using the magnifying glass I could check for contacts between the pins and via. Indeed two of I2S pins showed no contact. With hammering heart I resoldered them (I cannot really say I have much smd soldering experience).
Slow construction of ESS9018 dac
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