Friday, June 6, 2014

Wire Wrap Introduction Video

This post is to provide a link to my new video on YouTube and a bit more accompanying explanation.

First off, here is the video:


For those who are curious about some further explanation of the process and purchasing wire wrap supplies, I see that Jameco has a great online article and carries the supplies.(Check it out here). Wikipedia also has a great article on wire wrapping here.

I recall working for a company in the 1990s that was still using it extensively for building aircraft maintenance simulators because it is reliable, quick and easy and well suited to very small production run products. Early computers used the technique extensively. Check out this picture of a Z80 backplane from 1977:


The main challenge is obviously keeping track of the many point-to-point connections when you are looking at the back of the board! I seem to recall the firm I worked for had some sort of system of tables for keeping track of what went from where to where. Generally, I find that if I am going to have problems with a wire wrap assembly, it will be an error I have made in losing track of which pin is which when I flip the board over!

That's it for now! Soon I will do a longer post on my first work with the nRF24L01 radios and my DigiX board. I have something almost working and when it's done I will provide more details.