group buy for homebrew CPUs?

[Patrick Finnegan]

On Friday 11 August 2006 23:32, der Mouse wrote:
> Admittedly, that could be a lack of tools.  Given a stereo loupe,
> pantographic waldos, and a really fine-point soldering iron, it quite
> possibly wouldn't be all that tough.  But those ain't cheap, and I
> think needing significantly more expensive equipment counts as
> "harder".

All you need is to use lots of flux and a chisel-tip soldering iron.  With the 
correct technique (which is one of the few useful things I learned in my ECE 
classes), it's fairly easy to do.

Basically, you tack down the corners of the chip, and then draw the chisel tip 
across the pins, along with the solder.  Using plenty of flux is essential 
for this to work, and it'll probably take a couple of tries to get the 
technique down.

Trying to solder the pins individually, and avoiding bridging them (like if 
you didn't use enough flux) is a complete pain in the ass, and just a bad 
idea.

Passives are a bit trickier, but if you use a hemostat or pair of tweezers to 
hold onto it, that shouldn't be too difficult either (hint: tin the PCB pads 
first).

Pat
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