This is to bring to everyone's attention two things that came up where some members might not be interested to check (although they
should be
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_smile.gif)
) . One is from a 65816 topic and one from the Forth section.
In the topic "
I/O not in bank 0" under "Hardware," BigDumbDinosaur wrote:
Quote:
I've yet to see a satisfactory method of mounting BGA silicon by hand. I have a hard enough time with SOJ, etc.
I've found SOJ and SOIC to be surprisingly easy to solder. A paragraph from my post a few years ago:
Quote:
For some of the surface-mount parts, you can get adapters to thru-hole.
Aries is one manufacturer of such parts and their prices are far better than
Ironwood's.
Mouser and
Digi-Key carry Aries parts. With these adapters, you can use standard IC sockets in breadboards with holes on a .1" grid. Soldering the SMT part to the adapter is much easier and quicker than you might think. Start by soldering a pin or two or three at each of two opposite corners to keep the IC positioned as you soler the rest. This is the most critical part, where it's important to make sure the pins are centered on the right pads. After that, you can just run down a row of pins with the solder and iron, with no concern for bridges. After all the pins are soldered (and it looks a mess), hold the board or adapter up vertically and run the soldering iron down (not up) a row of pins and the excess solder will come off onto the iron and leave the pins soldered perfectly with the same amount of solder on every pin, and no bridges. You don't need a tiny iron that can solder one pin at time, and you don't need ultra-small-diameter solder. Extra flux from a tube helps, but you can do it without it too. It's ok if the soldering iron tip covers three pins at a time. Just be careful not to bend SOIC pins.
Aries and other manufacturers offer adapters to make SOICs and other SMT parts able to be plugged into DIP sockets. Here's a page of Aries ones, some of which I've used:
http://www.arieselec.com/products/overv ... apters.htm ; and an example:
![Image](http://www.arieselec.com/products/data/18011-soic-and-soj-to-dip-adapter.jpg)
And in the topic "
6502 Forth with hardware accelerator" in the Forth section, BigEd wrote:
Quote:
...is also a win: the FPGA can be on a 5v-friendly 40-pin DIP module, at the cost of an external latch. Then the board design stays in familiar 0.1" pitch, through-hole, 5v territory. [...] I'm not ready to solder surface-mount devices, but I want the flexibility of CPLDs and FPGAs, and I've got a 5v system to build on. I've got a couple of these DIL modules, and they should be suitable to experiment with variations on the 6502 theme.
The other alternative is PLCCs, which can be put in sockets-- even wire-wrap sockets-- that fit into breadboards with the holes on a .1" grid. I got my McKenzie Berg PLCC wire-wrap sockets from Allied. Unfortunately Allied doesn't seem to have them anymore, nor does
http://smt-adapter.biz/ . However, BigEd pointed us to a source that stocks WW PLCC sockets in many sizes:
http://uk.rs-online.com/web/c/?searchTe ... ra=oss&r=t .
Here's a picture of one of my 44-pin ones:
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WW_PLCC_44a.jpg [ 54.55 KiB | Viewed 3117 times ]
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WW_PLCC_44b.jpg [ 52.86 KiB | Viewed 3117 times ]
As you can see, it's not one of those more-common monstrosities with a big PC board around the outside and all the WW pins outside the perimeter of the actual socket. It takes no more room than a non-wire-wrap PLCC socket.