looking for OPL3 chips

[pkniffer]

anyone out there got any spares from a bulk order?

thanks,

pk

[stryd_one]

You know you can get them from soundcards yeh?

[pkniffer]

im not good enough at soldering.

isn't it pretty hard?

[stryd_one]

Get some practice then :) There are lots of SMD chips on those cards that you don't need, so it won't matter if you fry them. And $1 (the cost of the last of my many SB cards) isn't a big price to pay if you break one anyway :)

Keep in mind that desoldering it from the SB card isn't that much harder than soldering it onto the MBFM board....

Otherwise, you can buy NOS OPL3 chips, but it's rare that anyone goes to the trouble, so you might have to wait a long time to get one :(

[Silverfish]

If you're interested in some new chips, I found a place that sells them for $5-ish a piece. The minimum order is $50, and I'm too chicken shit to manage a group order myself (not to mention the fact I have no money right now). But, the option is there.

[audiocommander]

Actually, there are some very nice tips on this forum for desoldering... (just do some forum search on 'desolder')

If I find the time, I will post this method along with some pics to the Wiki... I did it with a very (very) thin piece of blank wire, that I "injected" below the pins and connected one end to some nearby element (eg. wrapping around an Elko). Then you can pull the other pin with tweezers; by one soft and very short touch of the soldering iron, the wire snaps below the pin to your direction and because the small amount of lead now sticks to the wire, you unsoldered the first pin! Proceed... and with a tack-tack-tack-tack... you get the others in a minute :)

The only problem is, that the wire may tear apart from time to time, but I got four chips desoldered in about 15-20 minutes... and the most timeconsuming was to get the wire below the pins :)

cheers,

Michael

[stryd_one]

Has anyone here tried that method we saw recently with sitting the board on a clothing iron to heat all the pins simultaneously?

[DrBunsen]

There's also the heatgun method - hot air gun on the back, tap the board against the bench when the parts are loose.  Also known as "Shake and bake" :)