8 Feb
2016
8 Feb
'16
7:05 a.m.
On Sun, Feb 7, 2016 at 11:57 PM, Richard Loken <rlloken at telus.net> wrote:
First week on the job in March 1980, my new boss
brought me two pdp11/04s
and a box of memeory chips. He to told me to double the memory in
the two computers by populating all the empty holes on the memory boards.
I had a boss in 1987 that asked the same of me...
Fortunately I started with only one memory board.
All the holes were full of solder so I tried to clear the solder before
putting in the chips. It seemed that every time I touched the soldering
iron to the board, any nearby traces immediately lifted and rolled up.
I never finished the first board and I never started the second board.
Mine was a DEC MSV11 w/128Kbytes installed, solder filling the holes
for the other half of the memory positions. I did not have problems
with traces lifting from that board (I was using an adjustable Weller
soldering station and had fine control over the temperature).
Installing the DIPs went fine but the first test was not successful -
the new memory did not appear. Quick inspection and a few bad solder
joints found and reflowed, and two more cycles of that and I had my
256Mbytes.
-ethan