Removing angle connector from IIsi Nubus adapter

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Let me get this straight: you have the Asante IIsi/Se/30 NIC and you'd rather not remove the PDS Passthru Connector from it? Doing such would clearly be the most elegant way to do this hack. The photo above is an inexcusable Kluge, especially so if you're intending to sacrifice a worthwhile IIsi NuBus adapter for that RA Connector. Trag has some bare RA adapters (brand new) if you want to do it the ugly way as pictured. It's far better, RFI-wise and reliability-wise, to forgo that approach!

Desolder the PDS Passthru connector on the Asante NIC and solder in one of trag's replacements so you'll have sometin similar to this covfiguration:

The upper card won't be as high, being the Asante NIC instead of the unobtanium two-slot IIsi PDS Adapter, which looks to be hacked at any rate. Much better to hack the very common Asante NIC using a new connector and be done with it.

What card(s) do you intend to plug into the new straight PDS Passthru arrangement on your Asante NIC? Have you got an accelerator or a video card? :?:

I'll post a pic of my CardStackHack while it's installed straight up in my IIsi as if it were installed in and SE/30.

 

[beachycove]

Very helpful and just what I needed to know. I have a Radius Two Page Display that ought to run from an SE/30 two page display card (I have three of these here in a box). I want to stack one of them — don't especially care which so long as it works, but the best looking one is a Supermac, and that for the present is the working proposal — on top of the MacCon card, so as to have both ethernet and extended desktop in an SE/30.

Just so I understand correctly, the top connector on the MacCon card is horizontal; Trag has angled ones, or by the look of the pics, ones that connect through the side. THAT would indeed be what I need.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

How tall is your SuperMac Card, or the others for that matter? If you get one of the Radius Color Pivot II/IIsi Cards, IT JUST MIGHT FIT in between if the TPD Display Card is not too tall, That'll add an 8 Bit Color Display to your GS TPD extended desktop for the B&W Se/30's CRT! [] ]'>

Got some pics of your trio of TPD Cards to go with the dimensions? }

 

[beachycove]

Pics. I would need to do excavations to measure two of the three, but the SuperMac that has the DB15 is 16.5cm high. A MacCon card is 6.5 cm high. Together, depending on how the soldering went, the two would come to something around 23cm. An SE/30 case is about 32cm high, meaning that inside there should be something in the region of 28 cm available.

The other PDS video cards are about the same height, but have eccentric ports, as you can see from the images, making them less obviously usable. However, I do have a large collection of cables as well as cards, including BNC to DB15 oddities, so in a pinch, or if the SuperMac card were to prove dead, I could use one of the others.

Not sure that I really want three monitors with the SE/30, mind you, as it is the retro part that interests me about retro-computing, and the two page display was used with the SE/30 in industry -- but it would definitely do Colour, you say? And no slot conflicts?

 

[Bunsen]

So, having watched that video of desoldering with a clothes iron, my impression is that I would be very leery of using that method on a card I intended to use again afterwards. It just seems too fast, too likely to cause bad solder joints elsewhere on the device. Any thoughts, folks?

I have a flat waffle iron here I am planning to put into service for this kind of thing, but not before adding a more accurate and adjustable thermostat. I always thought best practice was to heat the PCB to just below solder melt, so a quick tap per joint with the iron is all it takes.

There's a couple of good articles on toaster oven reflow in Silicon Chip http://www.siliconchip.com.au . There's a recommended heat up, hold, and cool down curve over time for solder, a different one for leaded and lead-free, to ensure good, reliable joints. In the first article, they monitored the temp by eye with a thermocouple and multimeter, and it rose and fell comfortably within the curve. The second article is about adding a microcontroller driven thermostat/timer, which is now available as a kit ($80 :-/ ) - probably from http://www.jaycar.com.au.

Sorry, posting from my phone again, so I can't check those links.

 

[Bunsen]

tt - sorry to hear ChipQuick didn't work out for you. Were you using it in conjunction with wick or a solder sucker?

 

[tt]

tt - sorry to hear ChipQuick didn't work out for you. Were you using it in conjunction with wick or a solder sucker?

I tried it about a year ago...basically an attempt to get the whole thing out at once with a soldering iron. I think it may be end up being helpful with a heat gun though.

When I first started trying this, I thought about going the route of solder sucker with a soldering iron. That technique should work, but it is very tedious and you really have to make sure every single pin is not sticking to a via.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Well . . . If I had an SE/30 to hack, I'd do a takeoff on this KlugeMac Config . . .

. . . the first thing I'd do is to leave the Asante Card Stock, if at all possible . . .

. . . Adapt the (first of two) Radius Color Pivot II Cards as I've done with the SuperMac PDS Adapter . . .

. . . install the Radius Color Pivot II "spacer" in the the SE/30's PDS Slot . . .

. . . install the Stock Asante NIC atop the Radius Color Pivot II . . .

. . . Install the TPD's matching VidCard horizontally in place of the PowerCache in the diagram above . . .

. . . then test for CRT Clearance, if it works great, if it doesn't . . .

. . . I've got two methods of dropping the NIC's connector down to two different different levels for achieving proper clearance up my sleeve! }

BTW, the "Standard DTP Workstation" was indeed an SE or SE/30 with FPD or TPD when it came to Compact Macs. However, as color CRTs came down in price and color previews became important, the IIci came into its own, usually coupled with said B&W or Grayscale FPD or TPD and a smallish (by today's standards) 13" RGB "High Res" Display or something like that for PhotoShop work and layout preview, so a three screen SE/30 would have been the "Semi-Portable" DTP or CAD Workstation of choice in the configuration I've suggested.

Place an order to macmetex, take two RCPII/IIsi Cards and "call me" in the morning! :lol:

 

[tt]

I think I have three of those IIsi cards. But on Gamba, the thing I really need and that would make all of this straightforward is just the angle adapter that he sold to make dual PDS setups in the machine trivial. I don't suppose anyone kept a few spares?

I think his "adapter" was just a right-angle Euro-din connector. You can probably still order them from Digikey. I don't recommend it though, the pins you would plug into the socket are meant to be soldered to a board so they are too short to make a solid connection.

 

[beachycove]

Well, I agree that modifying a MacCon is not an especially good idea, so looking at it again, I have a) ordered some gear from macmetex and B) pm'd trag re. the availability of euro-din connectors in his stash. You never know.

They are no longer on digikey from what I can see, though they do appear in a handful of manufacturer catalogues. What I fear is needing to order a minimum of a hundred.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Well, I agree that modifying a MacCon is not an especially good idea . . .

It's not all that BAD an idea either, they're far easier to come by than any other useful card for the SE/30 and cost a LOT less than anything but those bargain basement RCPII/IIsi Cards from macmetex!

I just mean to say that altering the NIC is one of the last steps to take if clearance turns out to be an issue . . .

. . . and I figure that it will be when my good buddy Murphy inevitably pops his head into this hack thread to stir up some problems. [] ]'>

 

[dougg3]

I ran into some of the same challenges removing the DIP ROM chips intact from my IIci motherboard. I have some Chip Quik and it's good for SMD removal, but based on tt's experience maybe it's just not useful for through hole stuff. Also, with the number of pins on the connector it's going to be tough to keep it molten on every pin with only a soldering iron. It stays molten for a long time, but not *that* long.

I also tried a solder sucker (spring-loaded) where I kept my iron on the joint while also holding the solder sucker over it and then pressing the button to release the spring, but it wouldn't suck up every remaining bit of solder, so the pin was still stuck to the through-hole.

Solder wick might work, but I had the same problem with it that I had with the sucker--it wouldn't remove all of the solder.

What finally worked for me was a vacuum desoldering gun. It's basically an iron that has a hollow tip you can put over the pin. Once the solder melts you pull the trigger, activating a pump that really does suck all the solder out (well, 99.9% of it). I found that wiggling the pin during this would help break connections to the hole. Unfortunately the Hakko 808 is about $180 so that might not be a worthwhile investment unless you're planning on doing a lot of connector removals...

I would guess that a hot air rework station could also do it if you go back and forth over all the pins until the connector just falls out. Maybe adding some Chip Quik into the mix with that approach would help?

 

[Bunsen]

I gather the idea of ChipQuick is that it melds with the solder to form an alloy with a lower melting point. So maybe that in conjunction with a heatgun and some shielding would help to loosen the connector while keeping other components from dropping off.

 

[Bunsen]

modifying a MacCon is not an especially good idea

they're far easier to come by than any other useful card for the SE/30 and cost a LOT less

Oy. You haven't been on evilpay much lately, have you?

 

[Bunsen]

Now if you want a really cheap card to hack up, this is yer fella-

http://www.ebay.com/itm/SuperMac-PDS-angle-adapter-Card-Vintage-Mac-/150574584087

Though it doesn't actually *do* anything, and the extra height (or horizontality) it adds could be a plus or a minus, depending on how and where it's deployed.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

I've been on eBay, the only thing more useful is an accelerator . . . which costs a LOT more than a NIC!

But now that you mention it, I'm delighted to have three NICs in my grubby lil' paws already! :approve:

I mentioned the SuperMac Card, but why use a spacer card that's exactly the same height and almost the same price as the Radius Color Pivot II/IIsi that spans your desktop to a third monitor and provides color too?

BTW, what are the dimensions of the TPD Card? :?: