exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

Basically the chips in the package have a guaranteed period where they won't absorb moisture...so they are given a lifetime in the sealed bag & then a number of hours to be soldered before they absorb a certain amount of moisture...beyond either of those limits &
it's recommended to dry them in an oven before they are soldered onto the board.

It's a bit more complex than that, but it gives the basic idea.
Can't remember if it's the risk of moisture boiling off & breaking the plastic encapsulation in the chip and/or possible tarnishing on the pins/pads which degrades the solderability

I wonder if it's actually the lead free solder which absorbs water and hence that won't flow once it's hydrated.

Continuing the theme of "Ooops, I did it again." on the forums. I seem to have won an eBay auction for an Amstrad CPC 6128 + green screen monitor, modulator box and games all for £117. I'll have to drive over to Bristol to collect it the weekend after next.

Only submitting a bid 15 seconds before the end certainly works.

Given how much CPC 6128s usually go for on FleaBay these days this was a bargain.

Well, it looks like ParcelFarce aren't going to be delivering my RS Components order today given that they're apparently still stuck in the delivery office (driver shortage?), which means I won't be able to check the Apricot's bus signal timing.

Bother!

Designed a Cypress Semiconductor CY62167GE TSOP-I to DIP converter board this morning and seeing how much getting on assembled by PCBWay will be. A bit expensive as they're 4 layer boards though.

Let's see how that gets on.

Otherwise, I'm at a bit of a dead end due to the DIN plug units I ordered from RS Components weren't delivered yesterday so I can't look at the bus control timings on the Apricot.

P.S. In lieu of all this, and the posting about what machines we have, I'm creating a spreadsheet of all my gubbins.

Hmm.. The reviewers at PCBWay keep rejecting my Gerber files as unopenable even though they are being generated in precisely the same way as I have before. :-/

P.S. Submitting without requesting assembly worked. Submitted a separate assembly quote request now.

Wooo! I just levelled up on PCBWay.

I went from "Bella Yu" (level 2) to "Yolanda Chen" (level 3) after ordering the assembly of one of the SRAM TSOP to DIP adapters with a CY SRAM chip soldered on top.

No bosses to fight yet though.

I've been in Twitter conversation with the person running the retro computer festival weekend being held at the Centre for the History of Computing in Cambridge on the 9th/10th October about possibly exhibiting stuff there, along with Binary Dinosaurs etc.

I'm not sure what to exhibit though. I could do "unusual British Micros from the mid-80s" with the Memotechs and Apricots, and maybe Sinclair QL, or I could show off the ST+TF536+switcher board and the TT or I could do something completely different, early Sun SPARCstations. Too many choices!

In other news, I brought the Apricot F2 out of storage so as to measure up the expansion card slot area as I knew that the steel shield was a bit different. This has meant a slight redesign of the board.

Anyway, whilst it's here I thought I'd have a proper play with GEM version 1.2. :-)

So similar to the ST GEM and yet so different.

It looks like I'll be exhibiting stuff at the Retro Computer Festival in Cambridge in October.
http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/ ... h-October/

I've still to decide what to take. I have a 1.8m long table so I can only really have a couple of working machines, with some extra static display.

I could do:

• Unusual British computers from the mid-80s. (Memotechs & Apricots (floppy converter and maybe RAM board) and possibly Sinclair QL (with Super Gold Card clone))
• Accelerated Atari ST (520STFM+TF536 and CPU switch board) and Atari TT030.
• Or something else.

I'd better decide quite quickly and start writing the display bumph and pulling together a set of software for the systems.

Very cool you're going to exhibit there, I sometimes go up in October for my birthday, it's a great little place. Sadly I won't be able to go this year, hope you have a great time and show off your machine :)