Modification

First, I want to thank Steve Chambers, Martin Burri, Matt Todman, Peter Ketreniak (K3CCD) and Keith Wiley for all the work they've done and their excellent instructions. And to the members of QCUIAG for their willingness to share. I've included links to the author's instructions rather than images because of all the extra information.

My modification is a blend of all their ideas. The basic modification for exposure, shutter, and amp-off is the same as original but I used Matt Todman's circuit board design for parallel port interface, compressed it a  bit, and added Peter Ketreniak's parallel to serial port adapter circuit (found here) to free space on bottom edge of board to eliminate another external adapter.

All of these images can be clicked on to expand.

My workstation on the kitchen table. I used a disk sander to grind the tip of my soldering iron to as sharp a point as I could. It is a 25 watt iron and I found it to work well. I have a 2-AA LED booklight clamped to the base of the Helping Hand work fixture for added light. A piece of 24 gauge steel protects the table.

Working without the Helping Hands fixture would be very difficult. I highly recommend buying one. Mine had a rather small base and I had to use a C-clamp to hold it upright. Be gentle with the clips biting into the circuitry.

Before beginning work, PRACTICE. I used an old PCI network card to lift pins. My method was to use the point of my hobby knife to lift the pin while touching it with the soldering iron. I tried cutting the leg loose but found that might damage nearby pins, plus the leg wasn't clean for later soldering. I did not try the guitar wire technique. 

For really close views, I used a Bausch & Lomb coddington magnifier.

After lifting pin 4, I used the tip of my hobby knife to scrape clean the via

The wire of choice for me was taken from a telephone cord. Pad 4 connection (A) was made by cutting back all but two strands, bending those to 90 degrees, and soldering them on/into the hole of the via. I found it best to tin the wires prior to making the connections. 

Connection (C) is again a twisted pair pre-tinned and tacked to the leg. As soon as connections were made I glued the wires to the IC's below but had trouble finding any superglues that would hold; something else to include in your practice session.

I decided to tack the connection (D) to pin 9 without lifting it. This saved me from having to also lift pin 7. After every connection use the coddington magnifier to confirm that no bridging has occured. Confirm that trace 9 has been cut with multimeter showing infinite resistance. I had to also sharpen the tips of my meter leads.

Here all 4 connections have been made and inspected

As soon as I could I used a hot glue gun to completely fill the work area. I later used more hot glue to hold the wires onto the IC's as the superglue bond broke loose. A check with a 50 Megohm meter shows the hot glue to be completely non-conductive.

Right about now is when I almost abandoned the project. I was testing the cam's operation by tying the reds and greens together, effectively undoing the modifications (it still worked), when I ran across this image:

It can be found at this webpage. What it told me is that my Quickcam Pro 3000 is actually a 4000 and does not have the Sony CCD. It also states that my results will not be worthwhile as the Sharp CCD has a 25 lux sensitivity. But after sleeping on it for the night I decided to go ahead with the project although I did decide to skip the amp-off wiring for now.

Here is a detail of my interface board with deliniations between Mod and Adapter sections.

Connections made between interface board and webcam. I did not make the amp-off connections even though the interface board is wired for them.

Again, before re-casing, I tested operation. This also allowed me ti figure out which side of the webcam is "Up"

Did final testing with serial port wired. I also had to use the disk sander to take off the corners of the board and to make it just slightly narrower. Box dimensions are 2.1 x 3.1 inches.

Box is a bit small. I had trouble fitting it all together. Also discovered a loose solder joint on the board that prevented LX. I was able to make repairs without disassembly, just had to pull board out of box. 6 inch lead wires were clumsy and difficult to pack but did allow for good testing.

And here's my final product. Or at least I thought. The serial connection is HEAVY and the cable is very stiff. I have found a serial to RJ45 adapter and have decided to replace the camera's serial port with a RJ45 port once I can find a piece of flat PVC to patch over the large hole created by the serial port. I also still need to add a 1.25 inch adapter for prime focus. I'm not sure the screw-on adapters available on ebay will allow me to reach focus on my 8 inch newtonian.

My computer setup for LX is a Windows 7 32-bit laptop, Logitech Quickcam Pro 4000 drivers, USB to serial port cable adapter (See here), serial to RJ45 adapter (Here), and a 4-wire phone patch cord.

And this image was taken in total darkness under cloudy skies. It was not with the RJ45 connector yet.

Long exposure mode with the Sharp CCD does have a great deal of noise and hot pixels. I have not been able to use it at prime focus yet because of work and clouds (never fails) but the following image is a stack of 48 20-second exposures using the factory lens. The moon was approaching full. Stacking software was DeepSkyStacker.

Obviously I need to experiment with gain and brightness adjustments so I am witholding judgement on the Sharp CCD as of yet.

This is page 2 of my blog, be sure to check out page 1.

I will add further modifications and results to a 3rd page when material is available.

All of my images can be found on my Flickr page here.

Please post comments and let me know if I can improve.