Ben Heck Interview Part 2

Here’s part 2 of my interview with Ben. (Or just grab it via the feed) We answer some more questions and go off on a few tangents about cnc machines, the PS3 and part sources. It cuts directly to the interview – I don’t want to wait 6 hours to record it. I should have a regular podcast up in the next day or two.

Five Dollar Eprom Programmer


A couple years ago I spent a good week wiring up a fairly complex EPROM programmer so I could burn a prom for my jeeps EFI system. Today I ran across this $5 version. build built by Jay Kominek He uses shift registers to handle the addressing and IO lines, all driven directly by the parallel port. There’s no way to escape the number of pins that have to be wired up, but the schematic itself is pretty simple.
[By the way, arcade supply shops are a great source for cheap UV erase EPROMS.]

[Update: I’d forgotten about the voltage change (3 vs 5 if I remember) needed to write UV EPROMS vs EEPROMS. With a little mod, you can certainly use this for EPROMS as well.]

Solder Paste And Reflow How-to


I was poking around spark fun electronics, and came across this interesting walk through showing spark fun’s solder stenciling technique. (I’d put on some gloves before handling that much lead paste) They top it off with some alternative ways of doing reflow work. My favorite has to be the target hotplate method. It’s a nice introduction if you’re interested in doing SMD work to save money and space on your projects [but not sanity. say goodbye to that] Me? I’ve used a 15 watt weller with a dremel modified small tip. It works great if you’ve got some one of those syringes of heat activated glue. Place, bake and solder.