--- Lawrence LeMay <lemay_at_cs.umn.edu> wrote:
Someone else suggested:
> > I'm not sure I do, either. Maybe he means Charles Lasner, a frequent
> > contributor to alt.sys.pdp8 (aka PDP8-LOVERS) up until a few years ago?
>
> Bingo, Thats who I meant.
Charlie is indeed most wise, if you can read through his reams of
detailed answers. I have always found him to be a great help in
ferreting out bizarre tidbits of trivia. Having been to his house
in Queens, I can say that he does have quite the wide range of
hardware knowledge, but I think even he would blanch at attempting
to disassemble a core pad and scavenge the bits (literally) to repair
a broken plane. I know I'm intimidated by the prospect, but I figure
worst case I broke something that was already broken.
I wish I had one of the stereo inspection microscopes that I used when I
worked on the factory floor at a Lucent plant in Columbus. It has a sliding
base and an optional pneumatic pedal to fix the jig in place. We used
it to inspect solder fillets on SMT edge connectors for circuit packs (the
AT&T name for a PCB) for phone switches. If I had one of those for a month,
I could probably get the view necessary to attempt to thread hair-fine wire
through the cores. I do have a Weller temp-controlled iron to avoid scorching
the PCBs and I do have a 1/64" tip for it (normally, I use a 1/32" tip for
general SMT rework). The only hard problem I have is how to test the memory
without assembling the entire plane first (due to the interconnections between
the diode matrix boards and the individual core plane PCBs).
Someday, when I have better tools and *lots* of free time...
-ethan
_________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get your free _at_yahoo.com address at
http://mail.yahoo.com
Received on Mon Apr 19 1999 - 14:19:19 BST