On Thu, 14 Feb 2013, Chris Tofu wrote: just melt down the pins from a few tubes of 4004s. I would use dual row headers. WHY bother making a card edge? You are going to plug a cable onto that, so WHY bother making a card edge? Anybody with a vise or a hammer can make cables with whichever connector you want! Are the trash bins no longer full of 34 pin cables with every combination of card edge and header? When I cleared my office, I sold a tote full for $1. BUT, I kept the empty tote. Like IEC power cords, they ARE worth something IN THEORY, but where do you find anybody who doesn't have more than they need? My first 5.25 to 8 adapter was one of those white plastic "plug-in breadboard" with a 34 pin dual row header and a 50 pin dual row header. Treacherously unreliable for a lot of things, but fine for experimenting with pinout. Then I found that so many of the pins went through with their adjacent ones, that my next cables were just crimped on connectors ith a few wires switched around. Admittedly, I was ignoring TG43, etc. For a fancy one with that, there are commercial ones available now. (There may have been then, but I didn't know where to look)

I know how to do it, Iv'e made plenty of boards over the years. Iv'e never heard of using packing tape as the resist. I prefer the UV-sensitive boards. For coarse-ish tracks (one track between IC pins mazimum), you can get wauy with laser printing the artwork onto paper (not film). I would love to know thew chemistry that allows coper sulpahte to disolve copper. Ferric chorlide (the common etchant) does put staisn on your fingers. No lasting damage (I hope), but not too pleasant. Gold (metal) is not hard to get, if you can afford it. But you don't want the metal for thism, you want a soluable salt. And for some reason, the one that works best is the cyanide. Not suprisingly that is very toxic and thus impossible to obtain How are you proposing to do this? What electrolyte? > > it is, however, quite easy to get header plugs of > >various sizes, including ones with wire-wrap pins. > > >If I ahd to make such an adapter in a hurry (== no time to make the > >PCB)_, I'd probably put 34 pin and 50 pin wire-wrap headers ont a bit of > >square pad board, wire-wrap approrpraity, and fit one of said adapterso > >nto the 34 pin header to conenct to the edge connector on the cable. > > If I'm following you, couldn't you cut the card edge from a busted > drive, solder that to an appropriate board (I would have to assume the > spacing is identical), solder a header connector, preferably right > angle, to the opposite side of the board, then solder jumper wires > where appropriate? Yes, you could./ But 'busted drives' roudn here genrally get repaired... -tony