Actually Roger, I just went ahead and soldered that one directly into the board. In the early prototype that was not possible because the holes ware too small. But the final production board has holes large enough for these unusual pins. If you like you could use the “Double Swipe” IC sockets. A further problem with that “chip” is the pins are too long. It leaves little room for the neighboring S-100 board. I cut them all down in size. PS remember to orientate the chip upwards. The much more expensive speech synthesizer chip fortunately fits tightly into the board directly (with no solder). This way it can be removed if required. John From: n8vem...@googlegroups.com [mailto:n8vem...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of norwe...@aol.com Speaking of sockets .... any "serial board" builders have any info on the USB245R module? The legs are way more heavy-duty than a typical chip. Are you guys soldering it directly into the board? If not, any hints on what kind of socket to use? Seems a standard socket won't work well (not even machine pin). What to do? Oh, and I've found that Futurlec Electronics has pretty good quality sockets at a good price -- that is, if you can stand to wait the 10 days to 2 weeks that it takes for them to ship to the States. Roger |