Hi!
I’m working on building a ROM adapter for an old Tandy laptop, and it has a DIP socket like none I’ve ever seen. It will hold a standard .600" 28-pin EEPROM, but it’s fully enclosed, and contacts the pins by pushing on the outside, rather than by gripping the pins themselves. I want to get one of these sockets for programming the ROMs, but I can’t find what this type of socket is called. Anything I search for as a “DIP socket” returns only the standard type socket that we all know. Any ideas what this thing is called?
Thanks a bunch!
–Justin
I am looking to try to id an exact part, however not matching up. It almost appears to be one of the ZIF sockets without the middle portion.
-Robert
Thanks for looking! Here’s the rub: It doesn’t hold a standard DIP. The pinout on the motherboard is not comparible with any modern or old chip. It holds a chip on a carrier PCB that has pins remapped. (Why!?!?!?) Sorry for the crummy photo quality, it’s the only one I had in my photo archive. As you can (hopefully) see, the PCB edge is where the contact is. No pins at all!
–Justin
That is very likely a full custom chip carrier system designed for Tandy that was cheaper than the standard ZIF sockets of the day. Your best bet is probably to find another laptop that is dead and salvage the carrier system.
2 Likes
I was really afraid that was going to be the answer. Fortunately, I do have a “test system” that I use for a bunch of things, but the option ROM socket is not (ever, ever) going to be used, so I’ll just carefully unsolder it, and put in a standard DIP socket in case worse comes to worse. Thanks!
–Justin