Suggestions for cleaning hundreds of socketed chips?

[Jim Battle]

Patrick Finnegan wrote:
> On Wednesday 10 September 2008, Josh Dersch wrote:
>> good contact... this is going to be an ordeal :).  The sockets
>> themselves are going to be a problem -- they have gold contacts (I
>> _think_) but the actual socket doesn't expose any accessible metal
>> surface -- the pins go through a hole (that's just barely larger than
>> a pin) in the plastic sheath and beneath that are the contacts. 
> 
> It sounds like the sockets you have are of the style that never really 
> worked well.  You may want to consider removing and replacing all of 
> the sockets, if you want the machine to work reliably, either with 
> turned-pin (machined) sockets, or cheap "wiper" blade sockets, both of 
> which are more reliable than what you have.
> 
> Pat

You mustn't have read the thread.

This machine is wire wrapped.  Replacing the sockets would be tantamount 
to building the boards from scratch.