NEW PRODUCT – 28-pin ZIF socket. A ZIF (Zero Insertion Force Socket) allows you to insert and remove chips easily from an existing circuits. These are often used for chip programmers or when you need to test a chip without damaging it. Move the lever up and chips drop right in. Move the lever down to ‘latch’ the chip in place.
This socket is designed for DIP chips of up to 28 pins and 0.3″ wide. What’s nice about it is it can snap into an existing circuit board or socket that is designed for the chip so you may not have to redesign the board! For example, we snapped it into an Arduino socket, which would allow you to change chips out (if you wanted to put a shield on top, you’ll need to fit a set of stacking headers on).
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Can you still fit a ICSP programming plug into the 6 Pin header with the ZIF socket on the Arduino? I can not tell by the photo on the product page which makes it look questionable.
This appears to be a clone of 3M’s Textool product with subtly altered markings (TFXTDOL, bogus 3M part number, bogus patent number). Can it be inferred that Adafruit willingly supports cloning reputable hardware without permission of, or attribution to, the original manufacturer?
Hey! That’s one of the TFXTDOL (TEXTOOL knock-off) ZIF sockets. I purchased a few of those from eBay a couple years ago. Mine had a different “patent number” on them. See here for a bit more info and a photo of the logo area of the socket that I got: http://nuxx.net/blog/2010/01/19/tfxtdol/
the patent expired so that doesn’t actually matter, but the 3M markings do matter and of course we will see what’s up with that (we did not see that marking until you pointed it out).
Can you still fit a ICSP programming plug into the 6 Pin header with the ZIF socket on the Arduino? I can not tell by the photo on the product page which makes it look questionable.
no, you’ll need to connect the programmer via the broken out pins instead
Surely I think you mean existing circuit. 🙂
This appears to be a clone of 3M’s Textool product with subtly altered markings (TFXTDOL, bogus 3M part number, bogus patent number). Can it be inferred that Adafruit willingly supports cloning reputable hardware without permission of, or attribution to, the original manufacturer?
Hey! That’s one of the TFXTDOL (TEXTOOL knock-off) ZIF sockets. I purchased a few of those from eBay a couple years ago. Mine had a different “patent number” on them. See here for a bit more info and a photo of the logo area of the socket that I got: http://nuxx.net/blog/2010/01/19/tfxtdol/
Following up on that, it looks like this is the patent number on yours:
http://ip.com/patent/US3500745
Here’s the “patent” on mine:
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/3502889.html
@reboots – have you also posted this comment on sparkfun’s site? we think we get them all from the same supplier.
http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9175
the patent expired so that doesn’t actually matter, but the 3M markings do matter and of course we will see what’s up with that (we did not see that marking until you pointed it out).
thanks for the note, we’ll look in to this.