Re: A tale of a chip and a socket

2016-04-09 Thread John Robertson

On 04/09/2016 5:29 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote:

 > From: Torfinn Ingolfsen

 > Most likely a bad solder joint.

That was my first thought, and so I carefully inspected all the pins, but
they all looked good to me. But I suppose it might have been something that
wasn't visually obvious.

Noel

If you suspect solder try simply reheating the legs of the suspect chip 
to see if that cures it.


It could also be that the chip is drifting out of tolerance and the clip 
you put on it added enough extra capacitance (we're talking picofarads 
here) that it was happy again. The IC socket may add just enough 
capacitance again to help the chip get back into its operation band. Has 
anyone else got a similar board and that particular chip has a very 
small value cap on one or more of its legs?


I see this on my 1970s video game boards from time to time - a board 
from the factory would have an added cap on one chip that isn't shown on 
the schematics or in my meagre collection of service bulletins for that 
game. The job was obviously factory as the connection is as clean as all 
the other connections on the board.


Data books don't talk much about this bypass caps issue either, I 
believe it is part of the 'magic smoke' of TTL logic...


John :-#)#

--
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Re: A tale of a chip and a socket

2016-04-09 Thread Noel Chiappa
> From: Torfinn Ingolfsen

> Most likely a bad solder joint.

That was my first thought, and so I carefully inspected all the pins, but
they all looked good to me. But I suppose it might have been something that
wasn't visually obvious.

Noel


Re: A tale of a chip and a socket

2016-04-09 Thread Torfinn Ingolfsen
On Fri, Apr 8, 2016 at 11:19 PM, Noel Chiappa  wrote:
> So I just had the incredibly amusing experience of managing to repair an
> -11/04 CPU by un-soldering a chip, putting in a socket, and putting _the same
> chip_ back in that socket!
>
> Before you go 'WTF?!?!', let me explain what happened.

Most likely a bad solder joint.
Happens from time to time on 30 years+ old equipment.
-- 
Regards,
Torfinn Ingolfsen