Laptops?

[Steve Gehlbach]

Adam Agnew wrote:
> http://www.missl.cs.umd.edu/~agnew/t23pictures/
> 
> You'll see the socket open and closed there. It's got a little latch you
> pry open with your finger to release the chip.

Yep, that looks like the Emulation Technolgy zif socket (or at least 
that's what I call it).  Never heard the term "coffin" but it seems 
appropriate for a couple of reasons.

http://www.emulation.com/catalog/off-the-shelf_solutions/sockets/tsop/

I guess it depends on how well you install it, but I had one of these 
lift the traces on a board I was working on, after a few dozen cycles of 
in and out.  Almost put me in a "coffin" since I was debugging a program 
where the bug turned out to be an intermittent on the socket.  So I 
would be very gentle with it.  I never tried it, but epoxying it to the 
PCB might make it more rugged.

TSOPs are neat for their size, but they sure are delicate for R&D use. 
I have found them to be tempermental on my EMP programmer as well.

I don't know of a better solution, BTW, just an FYI.

-Steve