Emerson's Moog.

[Phil Harbison]

Tim Ressel wrote:
> For this scheme to work well, the connector will have to be
> chosen with care. For example, edge-card connectors have very
> high insertion force. These would work, but not be practical
> in the long run. PCMCIA connectors come to mind, but are
> delicate, and the female side might be hard to find.
> I'm sure the right connector is out there. Anyone?

I would suggest the HDI connector used for wide SCSI drives.
It is compact, has lots of pins (64, I think) and has low
insertion/extraction force.  DIN-41612 connectors would also
be good.  The insertion force is low.  Extraction force is
high but in return you get a gas tight connection.  Both
types of connectors are keyed so you can't possibly invert
the connector.

Another possibility might be to use a ZIF socket. You can
buy headers that plug into these sockets (40 pin dual inline,
for example) and allow you to interconnect any two pins using
wire or a resistor.  You could even pot the result.  As an
alternative, you could build a programmer that would have
a pigtail cable going to a board with traditional patch
points and potentiometers.  This could be used to refine a
patch before committing it to the hard-wired version.

See, it does help to have a few of us "digital weenies"
around.  We're quite used to dealing with massive numbers
of interconnects. :-)

-- 
*name: Phil Harbison
*path: alvitar at xavax.com