A ZIF Socket seemed perfect at first... then a pit of despair... and then finally awesome.

Seriously, what did I do to deserve these challenges installing a ZIF socket? The reason you would want a Zero Insertion Force is when you expect to insert and remove a lot of ICs as in a test setup (what I'm doing). Or do you have an old IC, one with fragile pins that you do not want to risk damaging? A ZIF will allow the IC to literally fall into place without needing force to press the legs into a socket, and the chip will not be subjected to the heat of soldering. This is an impromptu video I recorded when I realized how difficult the fit can be in some PC boards. The ZIF went into my Color Computer 2 that will be used for testing CocoDV circuit boards. This will avoid bent pins and prevent wear and tear on the test hardware in the long run.

[mgeorge]

Thanks for the tip, was having the same issue.

[TheZombo]

WOW you are truly a blessing I purchased a bunch of these for my drum machine did not know they were in that position my gosh!! like WHAT DA!!! But thank you so much for this video cheers!!

[bullygram]

You are a blessing, I am going through a real mess, where MCU leads are constantly bent! Thank you

[antipode]

Wow, never thought of that. I should check the ZIF sockets I have to see what they look like. I haven't tried to make a ZIF CoCo yet, as 90% of the broken CoCos I get in are because of RAM. All of my other chips just have standard dual wipe sockets on them, which is fine for now. I might put a ZIF socket on one of the RAM slots.

[sayeretmatkaal]

1) I think ZIF pins are oriented that way to cause minimum trauma on installing in breadboards
2) If you are NOT using 2-sided board with plated-thru holes, just ream the holes with a rat-tail-file or ground-hacksaw-blade
3) If you have the fingers of a brain-surgeon, you could grind half the pins at a time on the edge of a whetstone.

[erichkeyes]

The ZIF are made for program and testing, not for install main cpu broad. But the fix works good on you. keep up the good.

[plinker]

Nice idea, have the same problem. Maybe an other solution could be to file the legs (the outter side) to a smaller cross section.

[stephengordon]

ZIF sockets are great, you just need to make the holes bigger when designing the PCB. I don’t know why the legs are so huge, all ZIF sockets seem to share this.

[peteclln]

Nice job, is there a danger of breaking pins when twisting them?

[darkwinter]

The “round pin adapters” are formally called “machined pin sockets”; and that’s what you’d use as search terms to find them. Also - at least on the ones I’ve seen - they are split at the top; the ZIF pins may fit into them without twisting.