TEST ALL OF THE CHIPS!!!1!

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 In this video, Kyle and I demonstrate how the flip chip tester (FCT) works. Enjoy!



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Setting up our new Raspberry Pi0-based Flip Chip Tester (FCT)

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  Today's task: get our Flip Chip Tester (FCT) up and running. For those who don't know, Flip Chips (in DEC parlance) are small circuit boards with a handle opposite an edge connector, about the size of a 3x5 card, that have a small number of discrete components on it. Each Flip Chip provides a specific set of components to a machine. The one pictured here is an M617, which provides six four-input NAND gates (two per IC). The Flip Chip would be inserted into a slot, and a wire-wrap backplane would connect it to power, ground, and upstream and downstream components. One of my favorite things to explain to students is how the PDP-12's CPU can quite literally be repaired. When FCs go bad, it's usually because some IC on the FC has failed. Of course, you can just swap out the whole FC (if you have a spare). However, they can also be easily repaired if you know what to replace and you have equivalent IC packages. Enter the Flip Chip Tester. Before he died, Warren Stearns pro...
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