[zzz]

so far I've been soldering all the wires from input/output jacks, transformers, volume controls, and other boards directly onto the boards themselves, and that kinda works, but becomes extremely annoying if I want to modify something on the board after it's been put in place or if anything blows up. thus I began looking into pluggable board-to-board and board-to-wire connectors, but the number of possible configurations and choices with nondescript names is daunting

.

ideally I'm looking for something like this (that's how it's done in my cary):

what I'm afraid of is that if I pick the male and female connectors myself, they'll be bound to be incompatible with each other. plus, as far as I know, one needs special tools to attach the wires to the receptacles, and I don't know anything about these either. sadly, none of the books I have goes into the lowly details of putting stuff together, so I'd very much appreciate any suggestions/howtos regarding these things.

 

[jboehle]

If you're in control of where each wire goes, as long as you order a matched male/female set, with as many connections as you think you'll need, you should be good. Connecting the wires to the connector isn't rocket science. You buy pins to crimp to the wires, that snap in to the particular socket you choose. All you need is some crimpers, or pliers if you want to go cheap.

That said, I did run across a very interesting possibility along these same lines in the DigiKey catalog yesterday. They're called "Test Sockets" made by AMP/Tyco. DigiKey P/Ns:

A29070-ND - 30u gold on cup & spring - closed bottom
A29075-ND - 30u gold on cup & spring - open bottom

See this page for drawings and specs:
http://rocky.digikey.com/scripts/Pro...=17&M=380598-1

The open bottom ones sound great for testing different resistors, transistors, etc. Plus, they're reusuable! I'm definitely going to get some for the R7/C7 sockets on the PPA I'm building, as those will be the most-tweaked parts on the board.

Let me know what you guys think!

-Jason