Hi Chuck, NTSC ... Never The Same Color Gerhard -----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht----- Von: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] Im Auftrag von cctalk-request at classiccmp.org Gesendet: Samstag, 10. November 2012 19:00 An: cctalk at classiccmp.org Betreff: cctalk Digest, Vol 111, Issue 25 Send cctalk mailing list submissions to cctalk at classiccmp.org To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://www.classiccmp.org/mailman/listinfo/cctalk or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to cctalk-request at classiccmp.org You can reach the person managing the list at cctalk-owner at classiccmp.org When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of cctalk digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Re: P112 question - what can you run that uses 1MB of RAM? (Alexandre Souza - Listas) 2. Re: old tv's and CRT's (ben) 3. Re: P112 question - what can you run that uses 1MB of RAM? (ben) 4. Re: P112 question - what can you run that uses 1MB of RAM? (Alexandre Souza - Listas) 5. Re: old tv's and CRT's (Chuck Guzis) 6. Re: P112 question - what can you run that uses 1MB of RAM? (allison) 7. Re: P112 question - what can you run that uses 1MB of RAM? (Alexandre Souza - Listas) 8. Re: P112 question - what can you run that uses 1MB of RAM? (ben) 9. Re: Disk drive manuals (Cameron Kaiser) 10. Laser printers, was Re: P112 question - what can you run that uses 1MB of RAM? (Dave McGuire) 11. PC-1/CX cartridge compatibility, was Re: P112 question - what can you run that uses 1MB of RAM? (Dave McGuire) 12. Re: Wanted: Research Inc. Teleray terminals (Ethan Dicks) 13. Re: P112 question - what can you run that uses 1MB of RAM? (allison) 14. Re: P112 question - what can you run that uses 1MB of RAM? (Mouse) 15. Sam's Computerfacts 4851 Disk Drive (Chris Tofu) 16. Re: P112 question - what can you run that uses 1MB of RAM? (Roger Pugh) 17. Re: P112 question - what can you run that uses 1MB of RAM? (Roger Pugh) 18. Re: P112 question - what can you run that uses 1MB of RAM? (Roger Pugh) 19. Re: P112 question - what can you run that uses 1MB of RAM? (ben) 20. Re: Networking a Macintosh SE/30 (Joost van de Griek) 21. Needed - rear brackets for BA23 mounting kit (Jack Rubin) 22. Re: To Metcal, or not to Metcal? Re: RepRapping. Was:Re: Restoring an Intel SDK-86 to "mostly like new" condition (Jochen Kunz) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2012 22:30:11 -0200 From: "Alexandre Souza - Listas" <pu1bzz.listas at gmail.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Subject: Re: P112 question - what can you run that uses 1MB of RAM? Message-ID: <5A3297F6A7834D649F33D6EB0E3AA0B0 at tababook> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=response Well, a 64-K CPM system will not print raster graphics with ease on a Laser Printer...You need more RAM! :oD Well, at least I tried :D ------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Fri, 09 Nov 2012 17:40:56 -0700 From: ben <bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Re: old tv's and CRT's Message-ID: <509DA298.8030607 at jetnet.ab.ca> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed On 11/9/2012 4:17 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote: Lots of vintage TV's still can be found. It is getting working color CRT's that are the problem from what I read on the net. Now might be the last time to find CRT's for vintage computer equipment. Has the color on modern display devices matched the color purity of the early TV's yet? Ben. ------------------------------ Message: 3 Date: Fri, 09 Nov 2012 17:50:49 -0700 From: ben <bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Re: P112 question - what can you run that uses 1MB of RAM? Message-ID: <509DA4E9.3020107 at jetnet.ab.ca> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed On 11/9/2012 5:30 PM, Alexandre Souza - Listas wrote: Well if you could access the toner drum directly from the host cpu, I am sure you could emulate a generic mono-spaced printer like a TTY in 16K including the printer fonts. Ben. ------------------------------ Message: 4 Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2012 22:59:27 -0200 From: "Alexandre Souza - Listas" <pu1bzz.listas at gmail.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Subject: Re: P112 question - what can you run that uses 1MB of RAM? Message-ID: <792C68D6371B41E29AFE93C46BE4CEB5 at tababook> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=response I doubt. And you woudn't print raster graphics :) ------------------------------ Message: 5 Date: Fri, 09 Nov 2012 17:07:22 -0800 From: Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Subject: Re: old tv's and CRT's Message-ID: <509DA8CA.9080005 at sydex.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed On 11/09/2012 04:40 PM, ben wrote: If you're talking about 1950s RCA/NTSC sets, then the answer is no--modern displays were much better. I vividly remember one of the first families on the block to get color TV around 1957. It was an RCA set--the color was greenish and the reds had a longer persistence than the other phosphors, so red objects would "smear" badly on a dark background. Really, NTSC was terrible when it was new and didn't improve all that much. --Chuck ------------------------------ Message: 6 Date: Fri, 09 Nov 2012 20:15:10 -0500 From: allison <ajp166 at verizon.net> To: General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only <cctech at classiccmp.org> Subject: Re: P112 question - what can you run that uses 1MB of RAM? Message-ID: <509DAA9E.2010702 at verizon.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed On 11/09/2012 07:50 PM, ben wrote: Actually no. To do that you need to be able to process the data rapidly enough to lay down dots as the drum rotates. The key thing for Laser printing (or any page printer) is the bit image need to exist before the paper moves or at least be preprocessed so that the raster image processor can fill a "band buffer" . The Video dot rate for a DEC LN01 (xerox 12PPM engine) was about 7mhz. The early character only version use a 12mhz 80186 with 8089 to keep up, The system IO to the host was handled by the 8089. Oddly the 8PPM LN03 Ricoh based engine was not much slower on the video clock. In the late 80s there were two lasers often those that were band buffer and generally limited to text and limited graphics and a higher priced version that had enough ram to buffer the page so the image could be composed before the paper was even moved. Actually I use my CP/M-80 system to lay down images on a real Laserjet4L. The price is that I need to run the system for a long time to create bit images to transmit. That takes hours even with ram and bit of buffering to hard disk. Even then the printer is doing much of the heavy lifting. The main issue was never ram but CPU cycles to process that data at acceptable rates for graphic images. It is the same issue as doing video graphics on a CRT or LCD. In that case you need enough ram to buffer the image for refresh and enough cpu to create and transfer images to that ram. So to simply move bytes to a 1MB page buffer it would take a Z80 at 4mhz around 8 seconds with no processing other than simple paging. That's too slow. Allison ------------------------------ Message: 7 Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2012 23:39:16 -0200 From: "Alexandre Souza - Listas" <pu1bzz.listas at gmail.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Subject: Re: P112 question - what can you run that uses 1MB of RAM? Message-ID: <F8B4613B967146C7AEA1AC774F475533 at tababook> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=response I love this list, I learn more and more every day :o) ------------------------------ Message: 8 Date: Fri, 09 Nov 2012 18:41:58 -0700 From: ben <bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Re: P112 question - what can you run that uses 1MB of RAM? Message-ID: <509DB0E6.6040001 at jetnet.ab.ca> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed On 11/9/2012 6:15 PM, allison wrote: That is a mechanical issue, not the idea of charging a drum with a laser. The old, cheaper hardware, faster software problem here. I don't think software has yet to solve the real problem of modern printers, is that text on the screen does NOT match the printed page, but that is off topic. I think history of Time-Sharing computers had a big impact here. You needed BIG fast page laser printer to share between users, so high speed printer was needed. Speed I don't think changed much over the years, but build quality HAS dropped. Custom software, or using a driver for a text processing package? Ben. ------------------------------ Message: 9 Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2012 17:42:39 -0800 (PST) From: Cameron Kaiser <spectre at floodgap.com> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Re: Disk drive manuals Message-ID: <201211100142.qAA1gdBn30408900 at floodgap.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII I like the floppies. They have those nice metal edges which make a ragged laceration if you get the right spin on 'em. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Use foresight, and pessimism. ---------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Message: 10 Date: Fri, 09 Nov 2012 21:20:32 -0500 From: Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Subject: Laser printers, was Re: P112 question - what can you run that uses 1MB of RAM? Message-ID: <509DB9F0.2000206 at neurotica.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 On 11/09/2012 08:41 PM, ben wrote: needed The build quality for consumer crapware has dropped, but if you buy that stuff, you get what you deserve. I had a DEC LN01 for a long time. It was a cantankerous beast but it was built like a tank. (I would love to have one again, if anyone has one lying around) Today's GOOD printers are built every bit as well. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA ------------------------------ Message: 11 Date: Fri, 09 Nov 2012 21:22:01 -0500 From: Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Subject: PC-1/CX cartridge compatibility, was Re: P112 question - what can you run that uses 1MB of RAM? Message-ID: <509DBA49.6000708 at neurotica.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 On 11/09/2012 06:00 PM, Fred Cisin wrote: If memory serves, the drum coating was a completely different composition, it was even a different color. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA ------------------------------ Message: 12 Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2012 22:23:32 -0500 From: Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at gmail.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Subject: Re: Wanted: Research Inc. Teleray terminals Message-ID: <CAALmimnXUWH=3g+dWLLZXRJcUk+jLjAhDx9JNd_9tRDzgP8fBQ at mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 4:37 PM, Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at gmail.com> wrote: I found one of the boards tonight... It's really hard to read the hand-written scrawl on the label, but it certainly _could_ be 1061. The board has several DB25s on one edge, a prominent pair of 9114 SRAMs, what looks like a ROM in one corner (if 8316 is a part number for a 2K masked-programmed ROM), and I think it attaches to the video circuit with a two-row 0.1" ribbon cable of about 20 pins. There are a pair of side-toggle dip-switches on one edge for what looks like configuration settings. I did a bit of googling for the Teleray 1061 and about all I found out is that it was released in 1978 for around $1100 and there are some quirks with it enough to get mentioned in termcap comments. I did not find schematics or a proper manual. When I got it, I didn't know what it was and I got it for the socketed parts. If anyone is trying to fix a Teleray 1061, this could be your lucky day. The chips on it are worth a few dollars to me as spares but not a vast amount. I already have more dumb terminals that I could ever use, so I see no reason why I'd ever try to turn this board into a working terminal. If someone wants it, contact me off-list, otherwise, it'll stay in the parts bin for now. -ethan ------------------------------ Message: 13 Date: Fri, 09 Nov 2012 22:29:31 -0500 From: allison <ajp166 at verizon.net> To: General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only <cctech at classiccmp.org> Subject: Re: P112 question - what can you run that uses 1MB of RAM? Message-ID: <509DCA1B.80209 at verizon.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed On 11/09/2012 08:41 PM, ben wrote: You are not serious. The drum rotates slowly but each line of pixels is the length of the printed area (8") times the 300line per inch of the circumference and at 8PPM the average drum in small printers turned several times to print the whole 11 inchs. It's a raster scan system. Character printers could compose at a rate that was one cell height at a time so they use band buffers that often allowed typically 8 or 16 lines on the drum to be buffered at a time while the next lines were being processed. That scheme was good to a point but there were pathological cases that resulted in page to complex and imaging failures. often overstrikes were the likely culprit. For 8PPM that means moving 7920000 pixels in about 7.5 seconds without much dead time. You cannot stop the drum during the process. The laser does not charge the drum, it's used to discharge it, you can do it with LEDs as well but they were slow back then. The typical cycle is charge corona, writing (laser, or led raster scan), developing (toner) transfer(transfer corona) and cleaning (discharge corona sometimes), and doctoring (scrape the remaining toner off with a silicone rubber blade). Repeat as eneded. Polarities and what optical range this are done are dependent on if the drum was selenium coated or the organic photoreceptor that Cannon wrapped the cartridge around. That belongs back with one of the threads that had NAPLPS in it or maybe WYSIWYG when WYGINS is the reality. No one prints at under 100 DPI. Maybe now with very high resolution color displays we see what we get but then the best CRT I ran in color was 1280x1024 and .27 dot pitch (about 70-80dpi) which is still coarse by then 300DPI standard. That meant the tube could not display (even in B&W) what the printer could. New we have displays that are easily better than 300dpi but printers can do 600dpi and maybe more. That doesn't even cover color. No build quality is better. We ( I was part of the team that developed the LN01, LN03 and LPS40 and LPS20 series at DEC) found that getting engines that could run at speed for 90 days without breakdown was a mechanical impossibility, we had customers prove it repeatedly. Back then the choices were Cannon, Ricoh, Xerox and in about that order of durability. Getting 200,000 to 300,000 pages between failure was the challenge and price was the other. To get to 40PPM (LPS40) a microVAX in the printer pushing a custom bitslice processor and a even more custom bitbliter so that a reasonably complex page set could be printed at 40PPM. That's what it took then. But the printer took postscript directly and printed up to B size pages with no page too complex issues. Now we have cheap fast cpus that can do that. This development was in the time frame of the "workstation" so the big VAX in the back was not always the factor. However the cost of even slow printers was high enough Then that shared resource was what the customer said. The price of a 8PPM printer then is far higher than a 20ppm color printer now. So the existence of timesharing was and is a red herring as big systems printers printed less graphics and small single users wanted all the printing capability.. Often the single user was a workstation of even then a PC with Hercules or early CGA video. Very custom, in assembler as excess overhead was painful and I had one of the uncommon 10mhz z80s. I did it mostly to prove a point but waiting hours per page was not practical. Doing hi res text only documents was easy and people were doing it tot he limits of what printers were available. Graphics just wanted more of everything by many orders of magnitude. Large ram was cost and speed issues but doable then. Code can overcome a lot of things but raw CPU speed was and is the prime solution (enter GPUs). FYI I still run that LJ4L as its durable and parallel interfaces to all my systems directly save for the latest PC with no IO save for USB ( PIC24 programmed for USB to parallel solution). Allison ------------------------------ Message: 14 Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2012 23:14:03 -0500 (EST) From: Mouse <mouse at Rodents-Montreal.ORG> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Re: P112 question - what can you run that uses 1MB of RAM? Message-ID: <201211100414.XAA23825 at Sparkle.Rodents-Montreal.ORG> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" I don't think that - to the extent it _is_ a problem - _can_ be solved, as long as printers are higher-resolution than displays. (Not unless you artificially cripple the printout to match the display's resolution, at least.) Well, to a point. Some classic machines had display resolutions close to their printer resolutions, and the two _could_ match fairly well.... /~\ The ASCII Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents-montreal.org / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B ------------------------------ Message: 15 Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2012 20:36:21 -0800 (PST) From: Chris Tofu <rampaginggreenhulk at yahoo.com> To: "cctalk at classiccmp.org" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Subject: Sam's Computerfacts 4851 Disk Drive Message-ID: <1352522181.91090.YahooMailNeo at web141104.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Need it. Anyone have it? Hook me up, ay/. ------------------------------ Message: 16 Date: Sat, 10 Nov 2012 10:39:21 +0000 From: Roger Pugh <rogpugh at mac.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Subject: Re: P112 question - what can you run that uses 1MB of RAM? Message-ID: <509E2ED9.7040701 at mac.com> Content-Type: text/plain; CHARSET=US-ASCII; format=flowed On 10/11/2012 01:15, allison wrote: There was a laserprinter available for i think the Atari ST (or later model) that did away with the processor and and used the atari. This cut the cost of the printer down to about 1000 pounds/dollars which was very cheap in its time, esp when compared to the apple laser.. I think it was a canon engine. This idea was used in the "windows only" laser printers where the ripping was done on the PC and the raw data sent to the printer via parallel port. Roger ------------------------------ Message: 17 Date: Sat, 10 Nov 2012 10:45:57 +0000 From: Roger Pugh <rogpugh at mac.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Subject: Re: P112 question - what can you run that uses 1MB of RAM? Message-ID: <509E3065.3 at mac.com> Content-Type: text/plain; CHARSET=US-ASCII; format=flowed On 09/11/2012 19:45, Tony Duell wrote: Pretty much every type of printer or copier uses different photoreceptor/toner/developer/carrier. As these all work on electrostatic priniples things such as charge, spacing between components, materials used in consumables, fusing temps are all different. 11 years working at Xerox, 12 more years on toner based digital printing... Roger ------------------------------ Message: 18 Date: Sat, 10 Nov 2012 11:18:19 +0000 From: Roger Pugh <rogpugh at mac.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Subject: Re: P112 question - what can you run that uses 1MB of RAM? Message-ID: <509E37FB.7050505 at mac.com> Content-Type: text/plain; CHARSET=US-ASCII; format=flowed On 10/11/2012 01:15, allison wrote: I am a tech at a company called XEIKON. We manufacture color digital presses.. We print on rolls of paper of upto 50cm (20inch) at 1200DPI at speeds of 19 meters a min (about 60ft/min??). The presses are 5 colour on both sides.. Being roll fed presses we cant stop the press and wait for the data, LOTS of FPGA's are required to keep up the data stream. We are low end industrial, some of the expensive stuff like Kodaks Prosper of course need lots more.... Roger ------------------------------ Message: 19 Date: Sat, 10 Nov 2012 08:41:04 -0700 From: ben <bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Re: P112 question - what can you run that uses 1MB of RAM? Message-ID: <509E7590.3070405 at jetnet.ab.ca> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed On 11/9/2012 9:14 PM, Mouse wrote: >> I don't think software has yet to solve the real problem of modern >> printers, is that text on the screen does NOT match the printed page, > > I don't think that - to the extent it _is_ a problem - _can_ be solved, > as long as printers are higher-resolution than displays. (Not unless > you artificially cripple the printout to match the display's > resolution, at least.) > >> > Well, to a point. Some classic machines had display resolutions close > to their printer resolutions, and the two _could_ match fairly well.... Well not resolution issue, but font scaling. Windows seems to have lost TrueType somewhere on my machine. For what little C programing I do, fixed with fonts is what I want! Ben. PS. If people were happy with printer output, programs like TeX would not be here. ------------------------------ Message: 20 Date: Sat, 10 Nov 2012 17:50:02 +0100 From: Joost van de Griek <gyorpb at gmail.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Subject: Re: Networking a Macintosh SE/30 Message-ID: <802939B0-23D9-4074-99A4-29D786921F3C at gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii On 9 Nov 2012, at 23:41 , Schindler Patrik <poc at pocnet.net> wrote: before Macs with Onboard-Ethernet came to life. Apple was eager to keep setting up Macs as easy as possible. That includes distinct connectors for distinct functions. Size was also a consideration. Standard AUI connectors would ill fit on PowerBooks. .tsooJ -- There are perhaps 5% of the population that simply can't think. There are another 5% who can, and do. The remaining 90% can think, but don't. - Robert A. Heinlein -- Joost van de Griek <http://www.jvdg.net/> ------------------------------ Message: 21 Date: Sat, 10 Nov 2012 09:02:15 -0800 (PST) From: Jack Rubin <jack.rubin at ameritech.net> To: classiccomp list <cctalk at classiccmp.org>, Ed Groenenberg <quapla at xs4all.nl>, Philipp Hachtmann <hachti at hachti.de> Subject: Needed - rear brackets for BA23 mounting kit Message-ID: <1352566935.26136.YahooMailRC at web181304.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii I'm racking a BA23 system into a corporate cabinet, using a BA23-AR mounting kit. I have the rails, front brackets and front cover but I'm lacking the rear brackets that secure the rails to the rear cabinet posts. Apparently some racks require these brackets and some don't. I have _three_ racking kits and none of them have the rear brackets. The brackets are short pieces of sheet metal, about 2" deep and 3" high. They are bent in a shallow U shape with an extended tab on one leg. Part numbers are 7428372-01 and 7428372-02 (left and right sides). They are shown in the BA23 Enclosure Maintenance manual, p 2-22. Please let me know if you can spare a pair (or more) of these items. Thank you, Jack ------------------------------ Message: 22 Date: Sat, 10 Nov 2012 18:43:57 +0100 From: Jochen Kunz <jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Re: To Metcal, or not to Metcal? Re: RepRapping. Was:Re: Restoring an Intel SDK-86 to "mostly like new" condition Message-ID: <20121110184357.52697ee564c856131a1e998a at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII On Thu, 01 Nov 2012 16:27:25 -0400 Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote: The Oki MFR-2241 arrived today. I did some (de-) soldering on scrap PCBs in the last hours. It is amazing how the small 1 mm chisel cartridge heats up large through hole pins soldered to big ground planes. My old iron wolud not be able to do this, in no way. The OKi tips are thin and short. Wheres the heater + tip of my old iron is much thicker and longer. A touch up on a single SMD pin is much easier with the OKi, as the total length of the tip is much shorter. The "precision" tweezers aren't that precise as expected, but its OK. Wane desolder that SO8? Grab with the tweezers, wait a second or two and it comes off. Wane desolder that LM2676 (dPak)? Tin the leads for better heat conduction, grab with the tweezers, wait some more seconds (large ground plane under the chip) and it comes off... My setup cost me 830 EUR (approx. 1055US$) including some tips. The single PSU variant, MFR-1100, is 300 EUR (approx. 380US$). If you are in buissines for a new soldering iron and can spend that much money, get at least a MFR-1100. It is worth every single cent! I'll get a pair of larger tips for the tweezers later. These are expensive, around 100 EUR. But desoldering a DIP16 or the like will be a piece of cake with them. p.s. At unpacking I noticed that the pacel had been droped top down onto the flor. But the PSU survived without a single scratch. It is build out of cast aluminium. It is heavy and build like a tank. Its really industrial grade equipment. -- \end{Jochen} \ref{http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/} End of cctalk Digest, Vol 111, Issue 25 ***************************************