This should go nicely with the Altair and Kenbak:


More on this later

They are spectacularly tiny, and very easy to miss!! Maybe not so easy to miss with the tweezers though? ;) :hide: Quite... Strictly speaking I pushed the M92T36 IC to check it was floating, changed position and nudged a whole heap of stuff off with the IC. Then I managed to make it worse with the ...

stephen_usher wrote: ↑Fri Apr 19, 2024 2:55 pm

rubber_jonnie wrote: ↑Fri Apr 19, 2024 2:13 pm

Mostly, but there are some that 'might' be resistors and are so damn tiny I'm not 100% sure what they are.

Oh, I see them now. Yesy, they look like tiny resistors. I'd not even noticed them in your picture before.

They are spectacularly tiny, and very easy to miss!!

stephen_usher wrote: ↑Fri Apr 19, 2024 1:14 pm Oh, only decoupling caps dislodged really then.

Mostly, but there are some that 'might' be resistors and are so damn tiny I'm not 100% sure what they are.

I almost never buy from larger places like RS, Farnell, Digi-Key and Mouser because for the small numbers I buy, it is truly extortionate what they charge for delivery. I usually make an order of just above 50€ (without VAT) to get free shipping. For small stuff where I'm ok-ish with made in China,...

OK, wow. I bought the spares board yesterday and it arrived today!!! IMG20240419120249.jpg Spares board is on top, you can see the carnage my slip caused on the bottom board. I have also managed to secure another cheap Switch Lite that has a broken case but works, so I have a bit of a backup plan if...

I pretty much only ever get TTL IC's from eBay these days. I have a few sources I trust, but I don't doubt they will eventually dry out. Sure it's a risk, and sometimes you get bad un's, but more often than not they are good, at least from the sellers I use. I almost never buy from larger places lik...

stephen_usher wrote: ↑Thu Apr 18, 2024 9:19 pm Got down to my Dad's house in Cornwall this evening and found the broadband dead.

After about 45 minutes on the phone the BT it seems that there's a general BT Openreach outage in the area. Oh well, having to use my phone as a 4G relay.

That's bloody annoying.

stephen_usher wrote: ↑Thu Apr 18, 2024 9:53 pm Eek! Almost as bad as sneezing with tiny surface mount capacitors on the bench.

Yep, a very similar scenario for sure.

Ah bugger. Sell it for spares and get an "unpatched" full Switch? I've bought lots of "broken" unpatched switches over the years from fb market place etc. and you can bag bargains (Sub £80) if you know what to look for. Usually they can be bought with one of these faults : "...