how problematic are socketed chips?

Steve Rieck

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Mar 24, 2023
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well, I put a picture of the current state of my reloaded board on the Facebook VAME and was more or less chastised for using sockets. Personally, I only added the CPU socket and the GLU socket. The rest of the PLCC sockets came with the board installed at the PCB factory.

The reason I socketed the GLU was because it came off a battery bombed board and had definitely gotten hit with corrosion, so I cleaned it up and it looks good but I don't trust it.

Have any of you had significant issues with sockets? i've looked at all connections under a microscope several times and everything looks rock solid.


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JDW

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well, I put a picture of the current state of my reloaded board on the Facebook VAME and was more or less chastised for using sockets.
Any such chastisement is idiotic.

You've got a band of folks out there who point the finger back to the Apple III and try to suggest (quite wrongfully) that "all sockets are bad." They aren't. And indeed, there are sockets in all shapes and sizes out there, and they cannot all be compared in the same way.

Do sockets lengthen connections? Yes. Is lengthening connections good? No. But on an SE/30 board the lengthening is minimal and matters nothing at all.

The SE/30 board isn't bleeding-edge 2025 tech. It's tech from 1989, where they still used a good number of thru-hole parts. Indeed, the very people who nit-pick sockets are the people would would also nit-pick through hole parts. And while the SE/30 moved more toward SMD versus the SE that came before, it was by no means on order of what we have today.

In fact, if any of those nit-pickers want to nit-pick anything, where are they on BOARD LAYERS? I hear nothing from them about that, despite the fact that SE/30 Reloaded uses only 4-layers instead of the 6-layers used by the stock motherboard. Technically, 6-years offers greater noise immunity IN THEORY, but after @Bolle designed his 4-layer board, much testing has shown it to work just as well as the 6-layer board. Why? Because again, this is 1989 tech, not 2025 tech. It's considered BETTER to have more layers and more noise immunity, and BETTER to direct-solder components rather than use sockets, but it all boils down to WHAT IS GOOD ENOUGH. And when something is good enough, you reap big benefits by using it. A 4-layer board is cheaper to make than 6-layers. And sockets allow you to easily swap out chips that might be bad. Those are big benefits reaped from small compromises.

So basically, all those folks chastising you have no idea what they're talking about.

I have an SE/30 Reloaded board too, built by Will Jacobs of CayMac Vintage. He did a fantastic job and I consider the board, sockets and all, to be my best SE/30 motherboard of all.
 

Trash80toG4

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Apr 1, 2022
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So basically, all those folks chastising you have no idea what they're talking about.
Amen to that. Sockets make just as good as or even a better connection than solder in the TTL arena. Wire wrapped connections are superior to solder, so wire wrapped sockets for chips with their mechanical connections rule, no cold joints possible.


Rub their nay-saying noses in that. ;)