Hello Watson,

Back in the early '70s I got some prototype boards from a company that
made aircraft receivers. They used four push-in pins, one for each lead
of the four corners of the IC. Two of these are usually power and
ground, pins 7 or 8 and 14 or 16. These four hold the chip up off the
board, and the other pins are wired spaghetti style, which I presume is
the same as your sauerkraut style.

Neat. Yes, sauerkraut style is similar to spaghetti style. No meat sauce
though ;-)

Speaking of this.. Last Sunday at our monthly compouter club meeting
someone donated a homemade S-100 system to the consignment table, but no
one bought it, so it ended up on the freebies table later, probably then
into the trash later. It had a chassis and box pop riveted together,
and the S-100 bus was all wire wrapped. A lotta love and time went into
building that way back in the late '70s.

Oh, wire wrap. Most older computers were that way in the 70's when I was
at university. It caused a lot of grief but then I found out an upside.
As a student you are always short of money, looking for an opportunity
to make a buck. These old wire wrap graves still would have some life in
them but not enough for the institutes to warrant the huge service
contract expenses or $200/hour repairs. So they just sat there, dead.
Then I offered to repair them provided I could do it my way. Brought the
big solder iron and soldered the whole backplane which brought them back
to life. They actually ran more reliably then ever, some told me. Often
the pay wasn't money but a keg and pizza which was then immediately
consumed by me and some staff on the lawn in front of the place.

Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com