Proto board pin fanout

Larry C.

I'm wondering how other people use the Propeller Proto board.

Maybe I'm overlooking something, but to me the "Large prototyping
area" is nearly useless for mounting IC DIP packages. Once you've
soldered a chip in place, you can't attach any other wires to the
same hole. Most other project boards have short bus strips (2-3 holes)
for each IC pin.

So, how do you do it? (Probably I'll feel really dumb when somebody
explains it to me!)

Thanks

Mike Green

I use wirewrap wire. I run the wire through an adjacent hole from the top side of the board, then wrap a few turns around the IC pin before soldering. If I need several parts connected to the same wire, I just daisy-chain it with a few wraps around each, then solder.

The IC and the discrete parts are lightly soldered into their holes before doing the wiring. Just enough solder is used to mostly fill the hole.

I will also do some wiring on the bottom of the board the same way, just not running the wire through the adjacent hole first.

RobotWorkshop

If you don't have wirewrap sockets and are not familiar with that method there are other ways to wire up the board. I have an SX48 protoboard that I crammed a lot of stuff on. In many cases the wire was inserted into a hole next to the socket and the wire bent over on the bottom to solder to the pin socket. On some boards you can just solder point to point on the back. If it is just a one off prototype I sometimes use both methods. I've attached pictures of the SX48 board and also a board I made for an old compass module. I hope these help. If you have any questions just ask.

Also, when you mention fanout it is slightly misleading since that term usually refers to how many other chips (which vary by type) the electrical output of a pin can drive. I think we figured out what you were asking for anyhow.

Best Regards,

Robert

hippy

Another way is to solder 0.1" molex headers on the ProtoBoard, connect them up with link-wire, then it's a very oversized DIP carrier which can be plugged into vero-board / strip-board with 0.1" molex pins to connect the two. You then have two stacked boards. Best to put strip-board underneath if you want components all facing upwards.

Similar to http://forums.parallax.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=52122 but note that puts the pins horizontal to how one normally views the ProtoBoard whereas vertical is IMO best for mating with strip-board.

It means that you can move the ProtoBoard to whatever strip-board project you're working on and doesn't dedicate that ProtoBoard to a specific task. Having 'messed-up my first ProtoBoard' by adding too much clutter and causing re-work damage, this is how I'd now do it.

Larry C.

Thanks for all the fine suggestions, folks. More or less along the lines I was thinking,
but I didn't know if there was a better way!

Hippy, that's a good idea to use Molex strips and make the Proto board reusable.
I'll probably give it a try, too.