13 Mar
1998
13 Mar
'98
7:29 p.m.
;-) Clearing the snow from my glasses, I saw Allison J Parent typed:
FYI in the old days when people would salvage chips of
old unmarked cards
a popular way to remove them was a propane torch and pliers!
Old days??? I recovered chips using this method a few months ago...
The newer boards are actually nicer for this type of recovery, because the
solder seems to melt at a lower temp. then the 20-year-old boards...
Obviously
the board would get toasted but you could get the chips off fairly clean
and fast. Though once I seriously over did it on the heat. The result
is a old 7400 that is bent some in the middle...it still worked!
Cool! If one is careful, there is more than just chips that can be
recovered using this method -- at one point in time I could recover usable
chip sockets (even some 40-pinners) that I'm still using for other
projects, and I now have a *boatload* of 8-switch DIP switch packages for
my hardware playing...
I received 50-60 ArcNet cards from my ex-ex-employer, and a lot of the
chips were doing me more good singly, so I desoldered roughly 35 of 'em...
but I saved 15 or so cards (3 of each type, IIRC) and the Active Hub --
just in case I wanna set up my own ArcNet network at home... ;-)
Grab that torch,
"Merch"
--
Roger Merchberger | If at first you don't succeed,
Owner, MerchWare | nuclear warhead disarmament should
zmerch(a)northernway.net | *not* be your first career choice.