Possibly rarest Apple 1 ever for auction
Tothwolf
tothwolf at concentric.net
Fri Jul 22 16:03:23 CDT 2016
On Fri, 22 Jul 2016, Corey Cohen wrote:
> There were no blank boards. That's the key. The sockets were wave
> soldered by the PCB manufacturer according to Woz. There were 2 runs of
> 100 boards each.
>
> This is also an early layout board (Non NTI) but with different wave
> soldered sockets than the two known production runs which both used TI
> sockets even though they were from a different PCB house. This board is
> from the 1st PCB house that made the "byte shop" boards but has the more
> expensive and reliable RN sockets. Which implies it predates the Byte
> Shop boards because of all the evidence.
TBH, I'm not sure why people get hung up on wave soldering vs hand
soldering. My own hand soldering is practically indistinguishable from a
properly wave soldered board and it wouldn't be unreasonable for someone
working at Apple to be able to hand solder boards similarly, or even for a
prior owner of the board to have retrofitted those sockets.
When I stuff boards, I use an assembly jig and form/pre-cut component
leads before soldering. This is how I was (re)taught to solder when I
began working with high reliability gear (cutting leads after soldering
can cause microfractures in the joint) and I continue to use those
techniques. I also use supplemental flux because the flux in cored solder
is really only sufficient for bright/clean pads and leads. I consistently
get better results with the extra flux.
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