The A4000TX in the picture above was one of the first Amiga hardware projects I built. I was clearly way over my head when I took the bold decision to build it with so little prior soldering experience. I got it working in the end – It was a great experience in patience finding the small errors I made before I got it going.

And then I proceeded to build a second A4000TX. The second A4000TX I built was arguable a better build with the custom chipset directly soldered to the PCB, components more neatly soldered and having no 030 CPU soldered to the motherboard. But I had a lot of fun building them both and the learning experience was signficant!

As most beginners chose to do, I built my first A4000TX with SMD PLCC sockets for all PLCC chips. I made the decision to cut off the inner sqare of the PLCC sockets to make them easier to solder. Since then, soldering PLCC sockets with the inner square left is something that pose no challenge for me anymore. So the thought of replacing the flimsy sockets with high quality full 3M sockets has lived rent free in my head for a long time, as has the thought of cleaning up the build a little here and there.

Anyway, I desoldered the PLCC sockets today with a hot air station, then I cleaned up the pads and resoldered some parts that was sloppily soldered. While investigating ways of desoldering the PLCC sockets I got the suggestion to just solder the chips directly to the motherboard. On a second thought, I decided that is the way to go forward as it makes for a more stable setup, better looking hardware and cooler running chips.

Besides, I already have a spare ReA1200 I purchased from another builder with full sockets if I want to test most PLCC chips.