sudomod

So i now have all the parts needed to start assembly of this lovely board. Im just nervous about doing it

As my soldering skills are not the best i would like to test everything as much as possible before assembly. Should there be any issues i can then hopefully get them sorted fairly quickly.
Does anyone know if Eugenes build of Retropie will work over hdmi without any mods? I know its unlikely to a brand new Pi that is faulty but if it is i dont really want to de-solder it.

Next silly question - Will the board give any functionality without the Pi soldered to it? Or should i just man up, take a brave pill and solder the darned thing to the board?

The board pretty much relies fully on a pi being soldered to it. The audio requires the pwm gpio, the video requires the spi gpio, the controls require the mapped keypress gpios. And then the pi also is used to help distribute 3v from what I remember. The board is pretty useless without the pi soldered to it haha

Luckily it's not too bad. I say try practicing on a broken electronic first so you can get the hang of it. Then move on to the gameboy when you feel comfortable

So i took a brave pill and soldered the Pi to the board. As i suspected the first 3/4 looked suspect and then after that they got better and better.
Now it works to a certain extent as i did briefly get it to boot and then spent the rest of the weekend testing it out. So if erik or anyone else can help/confirm i would be grateful.

The unit will not boot from the usb on the aio, I get the WSOD but if i try the battery or direct it works fine. Should i still reflow the TP4056 module?
I suspect that the answer is yes as my next issue is that i dont get a response from any of the buttons. I have tried multiple button membranes and still the same result

Any help is appreciated again

Check if the green light on the pi turns on, when you connect power to the usb. If not, you may resolder the battery connection on the tp4056. Flux will give you the power..

About the buttons, can you show a picture of your board? Maybe you have version 1. The solution would be soft tacticles

Thanks for the link to your build.
My board is V2 though as its the black version like Eugene is currently selling on Tindie I suspect that it is a grounding issue so think i need to fire up the soldering iron again. Hopefully if get a little heavy with the tip of my flux pen it will give me enough juice to reflow

It is actually not my build

So after i reflowed the tp4065 and redid a couple of the dodgy looking gpio pins i can now get a boot from the usb - Happy times
It booted to a shell so i tested the buttons with the pads that came with the shell and got a response from them.

Reflashed the SD card and tried again, booted to the normal retropie menu and the buttons now dont work. Im sure its not supposed to be this difficult