Suggestions for cleaning hundreds of socketed chips?

[Jules Richardson]

Josh Dersch wrote:
> I've started taking the chips out one by one and cleaning the legs by 
> running them over a strip of scotch-brite.  This clears off the 
> corrosion (and some of these are VERY corroded).

Ugh. I've seen early ICs where the legs essentially rot from the inside-out; 
the pins become extremely fragile and prone to just falling off, and no amount 
of cleaning makes a good connection. I've brought machines back to life where 
it's just been easier to ditch any IC that looks suspect and replace it with a 
good part - it's far less trouble than trying to judge how good every single 
IC leg is.

I know what a headache densely-packed boards can be. Sometimes I've found that 
bending sewing pins right at the tips, hooking them under the ends of the IC 
and then using a pair of pliers to pull on them is the best way of getting ICs 
out.

cheers

Jules