HP-IB, Amigo/cs80 was Re: hp 9153 floppy & disk

Could you elaborate, please. What peoblems do you have? My expeirence of teaching others to solder is that the first problem are those who've read the typical hobbyist books/articles which warn about putting too much oslder on the joint and forming a 'bridge'. As a result they put far too little solder on and don't make a conneciton at all. The second common problem is dirty/oxidised components or PCB tracks. Flux will only go so far in cleaning things up. When soldering to untinned boards (e.g. stripboard), I often rub it over with 1000 grit wet-n-dry paper. The soldering iron is there only to heat the joint. It is not there to carry or 'paste' solder. You 'tim' the iron with a little oslder to improve the heat conduction, then use the iron to heat the parts you want to solder. And melt the solder onto the joint, not onto the iron. Another common problem is that the iron is simply not powerful enough. This is comoon if yuo are trying to solder (or worse desolder) on multi-layer PCBs with internal power and ground planes and there aren't 'thermal breaks' etched into said plains. It is almost impossible to solder such connections with a non-temparature-controlled iron. I don;t deny that solderless techniques are great -- if they work reliably. Wire-wrappiong is fine. IDC connectors are fine (if you get good ones) -- but they're a right pain to fit if you want anything other than the 'standard' order of wires in the cable. In other words, it's easy to fit a DB25 connector onoto a bit of ribbon cable, but more trouble than it's worth to cut and swap round wires to make a null modem. But if the solderless technique adds problems of its own (poor connections , excessive 'strays', etc) then you're better off soldering it. It'll be a lot quicker in the end. -tony