Chip with holes in it

From: Ben Bridgwater <bennyb_at_ntplx.net>
Date: Wed Nov 20 12:19:26 2002

Wizard wrote:
> Those one round and slot holes is for manufacturing process, simply
> drops onto bed with two precision-machined pins to keep things in
> alignment. This is especially necessary because chip bonding and
> wire bonding, lid placing and soldering process is mostly mechanical.
>
> Later on when processing becomes powerful enough for optical
> alignment on the fly, that holes disappeared.

Thanks, Wizard, and also to the others that replied.

When I saw it all that could come to mind was that maybe they were
related to holding the chip in the board it was destined for ... I
remember an ECG machine I wrote the software for where the 68000 (the
*large* DIP) in the prototypes had to be "tied down" with a cable tie
around the socket to stop itself from thermally walking out of it! I
read that the Apple III had a similar problem with a lot of it's chips.

Ben

P.S. Just for the record I'm not a chip collector, although I can't
blame a scrapper for selling off whatever he can of a system that's
destined to be recycled. Obviously it's too bad if a collectible machine
gets scrapped, but the number of collectors isn't large enough to ensure
otherwise.
Received on Wed Nov 20 2002 - 12:19:26 GMT