Wouter van Ooijen writes:

> > > As a small scale manufacturer of programmers it is cause of 
> > continual
> > > irritation to us that the 40 pin multi width ZIF socket 
> > forms over 80%
> > > of the material cost of the programmer ! 
> > 
> > As a hobbyist the cost of the darned things annoys me too!  :-)
> 
> Then why do you use those stupid things at all? Alternatives:
> - include an ICSP connector in you dedign

I wonder why people are using anything *but* ICSP when they have that
option.  It's just do darned convenient to build a circuit on your
breadboard and then just program and re-program to your heart's
content without ever touching the hardware.    You don't need to spend
much more to get in-circuit debugging as well.  The only time I can
see use for a ZIF socket is when you want to program a bunch of
chips.  In reality, you would want to use a production programmer
(multiple voltage verify) for this, you but can make do with a small
(400 pin, $3) breadboard and one 40-pin multi-width ZIF socket.  Plug
the ZIF into the breadboard and wire up the apropriate pins to your
ICSP programmer and burn away.  This way you only need *one* ZIF
socket for *all* your chips, regardles of mfgr.

-p.
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