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cleaning a flaky ZIF socket?
mightyohm:
The ZIF socket on my AVR Dragon is quite a few years old and has become really intermittent/flaky. Is there any way to clean ZIF sockets? I can't see any obvious way to open it up, and I sprayed some contact cleaner into it but that didn't help much.
Any ideas?
SgtRock:
Dear Mightyohm:
--Your might try DeoxIT D100L. D100L has oleic acid (which is only very slightly acidic) in it. It can often be helpful with intermittent connections. Get the drops, not the spray. Put a little bit on a thin pipe cleaner and push in out of the sockets, leave for an hour or so, then clean sockets with a dry pipe cleaner. Try not to get it on anything else. It will not hurt anything, but it can attract dust and pollution, and make high resistance leakage paths, much like anything. If you do, you can clean with high purity isopropyl alcohol. Follow up with DeoxIT Gold to shield surfaces from further oxidation. Best Regards
Clear Ether
Bored@Work:
All AVRs are in-circuit-programmable. You could drop the habit of programming them in a ZIF socked and instead go the in-circuit-programming way.
If you want to stay with the ZIF socked, replace it. You can spend a fortune on sprays and chemistry and black magic. And you can spend days spraying and cleaning and waving a dead chicken over it. In the end it won't last long and the old ZIF socket will soon be back playing the same tricks. And there is nothing worse than a tool playing tricks.
A good new ZIF socket is what? $10, $15? Add to that the cost of a normal socket, and then you do the old trick. Desolder the old broken ZIF socket, replace it with the normal socket. Then plug the new ZIF socket into the normal socket. And fix the ZIF socket to the normal socket with hot glue. Next time the ZIF socket breaks you just remove the hot glue, unplug the ZIF socket and plug in a new one. Until, of course, the normal socket wears out, too. Then you once again need to get the desoldering pump out.
SgtRock:
Dear Mightyohm:
--With regard to the previous comments by BoredAtWork. Please note I did not advocate sprays (one which you already tried), dead chickens or Black Magic. My advice was strictly confined to the problem of oxidation. If the problem is mechanical in nature then obviously a new socket would be the thing to try.
--Sockets are notorious for causing trouble. Plugging one into another doubles your chances of an intermittent open. Nonetheless I would consider trying it. The point of my advice was to give you something to try short of desoldering a socket, and taking a chance of making the PCB unusable.
--The procedure I recommended in my first post should take about 15 minutes, rather than days. I have used DL100 and can testify that it often improves metal to metal conduction. If the problem lies elsewhere, it cannot help. It is used by a lot of professionals. Check it out on the Web and ask your friends. I think you will find it is not in the same class as dead chickens or Black Magic. Best Regards
Clear Ether
Zero999:
--- Quote from: SgtRock on August 25, 2011, 07:21:13 am -----Sockets are notorious for causing trouble. Plugging one into another doubles your chances of an intermittent open. Nonetheless I would consider trying it.
--- End quote ---
Sockets normally only fail when they're repeatedly having components inserted inot and ejected from them. The socket holding the ZIF is less likely to fail because it continuously holds a component, rather than having its contacts wear out.
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