50way Edge Connectors

[MartinW]

Where do people generally get their expansion port edge connectors from? They seem to be silly money! £17 odd for a single IDC edge connector!

[TotO]

It's not a good price at all.
You are searching for a clipsable ribbon cable version or for a pcb soldering version?

[MartinW]

Preference would be for a ribbon cable version. I already have some short 50 way ribbon cables from Arcade PCBs that I could cut one end off and use. That would give me the greatest flexibility with experimenting as I would then be able to use jumper wires to breadboards, etc.

[TheCorfiot]

Hi Martin, just solder a dual row 25pin idc male header as used on pcbs, onto the existing edge connector.
You can then use cheapo 50 way idc connectors ie scsi type and the connection is far more reliable.

TC 

[MartinW]

   is that really an acceptable thing to do??

I like the thinking, yes, but when people solder wires directly to arcade PCBs because they haven't got the right connector, it always make me want to chop their fingers off to stop them ever going near a soldering iron again 

It would be an awful lot easier and cheaper mind.

[TotO]

No, never solder directly to a PCB with wires !

The good connector can be found on a USA online shop for $0.50, but they don't want to ship outside the country.
On ebay, you can easily found the soldering version for PCB at a good price...

[db6128]

Were wires necessarily suggested? I'm not experienced with soldering, but perhaps the suggestion was to solder the 50-pin IDC directly onto the contacts of the edge connector... if that's even possible. Wires would be far too messy, in any case.

[Octoate]

Eliot still has one 50pin edge connector for 2.60 EUR in stock. Have a look at his webshop for more information.

[MartinW]

Thank you - that's a source I wasn't aware of. I'd rather do it properly so I've sent Eliot a mail with my details.

Martin.

[TheCorfiot]

Were wires necessarily suggested? I'm not experienced with soldering, but perhaps the suggestion was to solder the 50-pin IDC directly onto the contacts of the edge connector... if that's even possible. Wires would be far too messy, in any case.

That's right the edge connector sandwiches very nicely between the row of pins and tidy spot soldering produces a very nice neat, stable and strong connector...i have my 6128 configured this way for the expansion port and printer port.
I believe Bryce also has his configured this way but cant be certain.

If it's done carefully the end result looks pretty good...

[MartinW]

And, it has to be said, can be cleaned up pretty well with solder wick if you wanted to remove it to. If I end up not being able to get an edge connector for a reasonable price then I will do that, but I'll see if CPCParts does indeed have one left first.

[Joss]

Hi Martin.


You can find them at Reichelt. Not sure about extra postage:
STECKER 50-254 - SLot-Stecker, RM 2,54, 2x25-polig bei reichelt elektronik


I was posting some photos about the soldering alternative here:
SYMBiFACE edge connector issues
It's not very messy at all ;-)

[Bryce]

The Reichelt part is for soldering to a PCB, not IDC. The cable (IDC) version can be very difficult to find now. I used up most of Eliots supply for the MegaFlashes. But at least they all went to CPC users and will hopefully all be used. I regularly search for new supplies, but they are either too expensive or too far away.

Bryce.

[Joss]

Thanks for clarifying    .... as you see I'm not very familiar with the terms .... 

[matty72]

My CPC expansion port seems to have track pitch of 2.44mm (.096"), not the 2.54mm(.1") of all edge connectors I've found. Is there a specific edge connector that should be used with less than todays std pitch ?
What's the trend amongst CPC uses anyway - to use an edge connector or to solder a male IDC header directly onto the CPC board (track/connector pitch issues easily dealt with) ?

[robcfg]

That would be pretty rare.


Can you tell us the MC code of your CPC's motherboard?

[Bryce]

You must be measuring it inaccurately, 0.096" pitch doesn't exist and certainly isn't used on the CPC. It's 0.1" pitch.

Bryce.

[matty72]

Agree, it's weird. See photos for 25 track pitch of 61mm - starting at 10cm - ending at 16cm (two photos reqd to align phone camera directly over each end - ruler did not move).


You tell me what the track pitch is?
What would you do to enable robust expansion?

[Gryzor]

OFF-TOPIC

@matty72 , your email server is probably set up wrong and email notifications are bouncing back to our inbox.

[pelrun]

61/24 = 2.54 (2 dec places) = 0.1" as expected.


It's *not* 61/25 as you're measuring the width of the gaps, not the pins. N pins have N-1 gaps between them.

[matty72]

Well that definately adds up - how silly of me. Thx pelrun.

[Bryce]

And I was afraid you had washed the board and it had shrunk in the wash

Bryce.

[pelrun]

Well you know what they say, that there are two hard things in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors.

[Bryce]

Well you know what they say, that there are two hard things in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors.

+1 to that!

Bryce.

[VintageAdvantage]

Can you tell us the MC code of your CPC's motherboard?

The MC of the CPC is listed here:

http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/tech/cpc/cpc-firmware/firmware.pdf

Even though I consider it a bit overkill to ask for that given the simple nature of the question
@matty72 - that's one rusty ruler you have there! Make sure you don't get a sepsis using that thing!