[Coco] Now running with 2M boomerang Memory.

Rick Ulland rickulland1 at gmail.com
Sun Jun 7 08:01:26 EDT 2020


Hi,

Blue soldering iron with a ground plug? I built about 50 Fast232 ports 
with one of those, some in my room at an actual CoCoFest. 1.2.3.4...wait 
for it to warm some more.

Had the spring sucker also. I recall wiping a little brake fluid on the 
inside walls to perk it up (NOT oil). After a time, that stopped working 
but I found new orings at the local hardware store and that kept it 
going until the tip became a nub. I also found melting a drop of new 
lead solder top and bottom of each pin (sometimes a second time) helped 
a ton with extraction.

OTOH, 6x09 are like $5 now, so clip the pins, save the board is probably 
the best way to go until you have practiced on a few C64s :-)


-rick



On 6/6/20 6:36 PM, John E. Malmberg wrote:
> Just got done installing a 2M boomerang memory kit on a COCO-3.
>
> The patient seems to have survived, but I have not really tried to 
> stress it.  Just have had time to power it up and Super Extended Color 
> Disk Basic + SDC all appear to work.
>
> If I were to do it over again, I would probably send the system in for 
> the install.
>
> Lessons learned:
>
> * I need a better soldering iron.  The 30+ year old 15W one from Radio 
> Shack is on it's last tip that I have for it.  It is barely good 
> enough to do this type of work.
>
> Need to figure out what to get and where to get it, and how much it is 
> going to cost.
>
> So looking for recommendations.  This is for hobby use.
>
> * My two solder sucking systems did not have enough suction to save 
> destroying the 68b09E chip.  One is just a suction bulb on on a hollow 
> tip version of the 15 watt version, that probably came from Radio 
> Shack way back when.  The other is the spring loaded suction from 
> Radio Shack.
>
> Still have the chip if I can manage to solder pins back on it. :-)
>
> I seem to remember that the spring loaded one used to have enough 
> suction to clear the pins of things I was desoldering.
>
> I was only able to clear the solder on about 50% of the pins with the 
> two soldering suckers.
>
> Not sure where I got the one with the suction bulb.  I do not remember 
> buying it, and this may have been the first time I used it.
>
> Not sure if I could afford anything better, but it would be 
> interesting to know the options.
>
> * Third problem is the the variable transition bi-focals.  It is hard 
> to find a position that I can really see what I am doing.  I may need 
> to get a pair of glasses just for doing this type of work, or some 
> type of magnifying glass.
>
> Regards,
> -John
>
>
>



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