Re: Rosetta progress report

[nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Dave Houston)]

To clarify, the BX24-AHT boards that Jeff has use all through hole
components - it's the roZetta board currently under development that will
make wider use of SMT. The only exceptions are the 3 SMT caps and 1 SMT
resistor needed for the MPX4115 mod to the BX24-AHT boards.

The easiest way to build DIY boards with SMT components is with solder
paste, a hypodermic dispenser and a toaster oven. There are a couple of
excellent tutorials on the web and there are 2-3 companies even selling
sophisticated programmable temperature controllers for toaster ovens
(although, to me, it seems incongruous to spend $200 to control a $40 oven).


The oven is overkill for the MPX4115 mod. A dental pick to hold them in
place while tacking them with a 15W iron works quite well.

Neil Cherry <njc@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>I've ordered 2 boards, got ZBasic & the IDE working under Wine (
>expect that the ZLoad will also work) and I've got my nice new
>smt iron waiting to be used. Now if I only had time! Grrr.
>
>Anyway, SMT isn't too bad. My friend taught me that using the proper
>solder paste goes a long way towards doing it right. While I can't do
>the really fine stuff I can solder the JDEC (?) and SOIC quite
>easily. And that was with the wrong size iron (too big).