I do a lot of work on older PCBs which have thru-hole and often socketed chips and on a daily basis need to re-program EPROMs.
One major annoyance that I have is ZIF sockets and inserting EPROMs - more often that not, even if the legs on the EPROM look perfectly aligned it's a major fiddle to insert them into the ZIF socket, if one is out just a fraction of a millimetre it can prevent insertion. I can sometimes waste a minute or two minutely and repeatedly tweaking the legs and trying to insert an EPROM into the programmer's ZIF socket before it finally fits.
I've noticed this on different programmers too.
(Note: when I mention tweaking the legs I'm referring to those legs next to each other, so 1 to 2 to 3 to 4, etc - not those opposite each other).
Naturally, the larger the EPROM the more of a hassle it often is.
So I'm wondering if there's a really high quality ZIF socket out there which I could put into the programmer's ZIF socket (or I could desolder the original ZIF and replace it).
Or maybe there's some tool to 100% straighten the legs of thru-hole parts like EPROMs? I know about the leg straighteners that are basically two sealed bearings in a slab of metal, but I need to straighten those legs that are next to each other, not those that are opposite.