Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: MOTM

DISCLAIMER

This is just my opinion. What the hell do I know about anything? :)

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My 'fear' of sockets can be directly traced to the ill-fated Apple III. This
was the
machine right before the Lisa.

The Apple III used TONs of TTL/memory chips. Like over 250. Somebody decided
to
socket the whole motherboard.

Well, if you are the Project Manager, and Jobs is dropping 50 ton weights on
your head
about costs, where you gonna look first. Those 250 sockets!

So, at that time you hade 2 players: Augat and AMP. Augat was in the
high-end screw-machine
sockets. AMP had a patent on the 'leaf cantilever' (sp?) contact, that looks
like a V. These sockets
were OK (Tandy used them), but they were about 1 cent per pin. Figure 250 x
14 pins = $35-$45 in
sockets. Now, AMP then comes along with the 'Value Engineered Single-Point
Contact' socket.
This contact looks like an upside down 'J'. The good news: it's 50% cheaper!

So, Apple ships 100's of Apple IIIs. Guess what? 100% (yep, every ONE!)
arrives D.O.A. because the
chips literally flew out of the sockets! Not just 1 or 2, but like 50 to
100! It damn near cause Apple to
die, but the Apple IIe was still a big seller.

Now, my good sense tells me that it makes no sense to spend $1 for a good
screw machine socket and stick
a 25 cent LM324 in there. It doesn't make sense to put a LM324 or any OTHER
chip in a socket unless:

a) it a EPROM, PAL, other other programmable part
b) it's a rare, $$$ chip (like the CEM3330 in the MOTM-110)

AMP's dual-beam sockets are what Serge uses. I think that's not being
useful. Why socket a CA3080?
I guarantee that the socket + CA3080 will fail before the CA3080 by itself
does. And, it it doesn't, unsoldering
is not that big a deal. In all of the MOTM modules shipped, I have see 1
truely 'bad' chip (a LM319). And,
it was probably 'bad' when I got it. There are over 15,000 ICs out there in
MOTM modules. 1 in 15,000
doesn't warrant sockets. 10 years from now, YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO GET DIP ICs
ANYWAY so it's
sort of the point of diminishing returns.

Paul S.
Mr. Anti-Socket and Anti-LED