
Wire wrap - lelf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_wrap
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metaphor
For sub-50MHz digital applications, wire wrap is still my preferred method of
prototyping, predominately influenced by my undergrad experience with this
guy[1]...I'm fairly confident that he was the sole reason why the local
RadioShacks in town kept a handsome stock of affordable wire wrap tools and
30AWG wire on the shelves year round.

I know certain defense performance specifications (e.g. [2]) explicitly
prohibit the use of wire wrap in production hardware, although in this
particularly case, the driving factor is largely based on maintainability
considerations.

[1] [https://www.ece.ufl.edu/users/gugel-
karl](https://www.ece.ufl.edu/users/gugel-karl) [2]
[http://www.acq.osd.mil/ats/MIL-
PRF-32070A.pdf](http://www.acq.osd.mil/ats/MIL-PRF-32070A.pdf)

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imglorp
For years, wire wrap was preferred over soldering for aerospace hardware
because there were no cold solder joints. NASA still has plenty of
documentation on the matter.

[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=wire+wrap+nasa&t=canonical](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=wire+wrap+nasa&t=canonical)

[http://www.jameco.com/Jameco/workshop/techtip/wirewrap.html](http://www.jameco.com/Jameco/workshop/techtip/wirewrap.html)

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rjsw
I still have a wire wrap tool and a spool each of red and green wire.

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analog31
That wire is still the nicest stuff for making small modifications to printed
circuit boards, because it takes solder well, but the insulation doesn't melt.

My wire wrap tool is somewhere.

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hga
Yeah, on the PCBs manufactured in the '70s and '80s that I worked with in the
'80s, I never saw anything but wire wrap wire used to make ECOs (Engineering
Change Orders, I think that was a DEC phrase that had gone into general
circulation).

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yitchelle
This is stuff of nightmares at the start. I remember my first year doing my
BEng. Discovered the wiring of the 32bit address bus was out by one. The wraps
were on the bottom layer as well. This forced me to get my schematics right
before starting the wiring wrapping. Plenty of other lesson learns as well.

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bbrazil
As part of my degree 10 years ago we did wire wrapping to make a simple 68332
computer with serial terminals for I/O. The team I was on was weeks ahead of
the others, until we were stuck by what turned out to be one wrong wire.

I think it was dropped from the course a few years later.

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daltonlp
Holler. Our EE curriculum did the same thing (with an 8088). All the groups
spent an lot of time with the logic analyzer detecting one-wrong-wire issues.

That was an incredibly valuable learning experience. I don't know if it's
still taught that way, but I hope so.

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duskwuff
Unfortunately, wire-wrap wire, tools, and (most importantly) sockets are
expensive and difficult to come by these days.

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philcrocket
Ebay is a great place right now for this stuff. Pennies on the dollar vs what
you can get from Digikey.

