Oh!pEnions: SOIC to DIL Adaptor Part II

SOIC to DIL Adaptor Part II

Once the euphoria has died down, sanity came back through the back door and slapped me hard against the reality of it all. OK, one, so now I have the adaptor. And two, I do not have any SMT chips. And worse of all, three, the thick legs of the SOIC Adaptor cannot fit into the programmer's IC socket.

But on the bright side, I have found my 12 year old green ZIF (zero insertion force) IC socket which I have put off many times on soldering it to a circuit board as to me, it was too precious. So precious that I kept it away and have actually forgotten all about it. It was not until I decided to look for bits and pieces (I do this while thinking about solutions) did this dear socket presented itself to me. I was still thinking about how to fit both the ZIF socket and the adaptor into the programmer when I realised that the answer was in front of me!

All I needed to do was to use some stripboard to create a medium to hold both the SOIC adaptor, the ZIF socket and the thin legs. Brilliant! And so, Lady Luck smiled on me and I was able to skip to Pasar Road for the ingredients.

OK, apart from buying the real stuff, I bought some
yellow SMT LEDs. And not only that, the small box
with spring-loaded cover. The white box is the latest
design, which is a bit bigger than the current but
cheaper black box.

Although the stacking lugs are compatible, its
still too big and no, I am not going to buy more
of the new boxes. I need them to store the SMT
LEDs and not start a collection.

And so, this is what I actually got from Pasar Road. Only
the green ZIF and stripboard are from my own. The ZIF
socket is very important as the programmer that I have
does not have one and so, when I insert and pull out the
chips again and again, I would either wear out the pins
(or legs) and also accidentally bent them. Because the
legs are so fragile, once you bend them back into shape
and do another boo-boo, they will snap off forever.

Soldering the fine legs to the stripboard is a challenge.
First, you have to solder one of the legs and also align
the pins so that they do not lean. The pins must also be
of the correct height as you need space for the melted
solder to flow into. Oh, and the most important part is
the orientation of the pins as one side is thinner and
also a bit longer. This is the side for inserting into the
programmer's IC socket.

So, tilt the board a bit to let the melted solder flow
into the small space. At this time, I would also like
to remind myself that I should have bought a new
soldering tip which has a sharper end.

There. All done. Since this was my first time and also
without any other alignment tools, the let the heat of
the iron melt the black plastic and so, as they melt,
the pins went out of alignment. You can see how
uneven they are.

Make sure you also cut the stripboard's tracks because
if you do not, you are effectively shorting all 20 pins.
Also here, I have soldered the other socket which can
take in the adaptor's thick legs.

And then, I went one step further. I created another
board for the green ZIF socket and also solder in
more of those thin pins. Now, I can place the left-
most board onto the programmer. This will be the
platform for the SOIC adaptor and the ZIF adaptor.