Umm… I just used one of these to connect to an Arduino the other day, and this “hack” is completely unnecessary. You can just use the RTS pin instead of the DTR signal and it will still work.

Holy crap, did he solder to a QFN?

Crap, I meant RTS.

I applaud the soldering effort here! I’ve had to solder 30+ gauge wire to more than one pin on a QFN-or-comparable sized package at work before, and it is no joke. Once I had to place the chip and solder a lead… It took me a long time and I killed one chip with a miswire.

That aside, I think the actual concept of this trick is completely obvious, the skill to execute it however is worth a nod.

Ummm unnecessary much?

No one has yet, so I’ll do it: You misspelled “alumni” and it should be “alumnus” (or just “alum” for brevity), anyway…

Having to solder while looking under a magnifying glass/microscope is a SERIOUS pain. Your eye/hand coordination is all off, that extra cup ‘o joe is making your hands shake just enough that the tip of the iron is shaking like a whore in church, and your boss is reminding you that the extra time this takes is screwing up your time-per-jobs metrics, and this may be your last job with the company.

This is tough work. Glad I’m not doing it anymore.

Man; I’d probably end up doing serious damage to an area about 3 yards around me blowing up in anger trying to solder that, and walk around with blisters too.
Although I did manage to do some very fine stuff on rare occasions, but I have to be in a special zone.