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So I decided that today was a good day for some Saturday night soldering. I've been sitting on this Relatively Universal ROM programmer kit for a while, and I figured it was time to put it together.

All of the itty bitty SMD components come pre-soldered, and it's just the headers and the ZIF socket that need to be tended to.

For no reason other than"I felt like it", I went for the ZIF socket first.

The Arduino headers came next, and I used an Arduino as a jig to hold them in the correct orientation.

And the programmer goes on top, ready for soldering.

Once the ends of each pin header strip are tacked in place, I can take it off and do the rest of the soldering without the Arduino underneath.

And that looks a little something like this.

A few more bits get soldered on the other side. A L-shaped jumper thing near the ZIF socket arm, and a header for an OLED screen that I don't actually have but should maybe probably get.

Plugging it in reveals that things are basically functional, so far as I can tell without a ROM to plug into it.

Of course just having raw PCBs sitting on whatever surface I place this on isn't really the most ideal situation, so I'll go ahead and print out a low-profile case for the Arduino. This marks the first time I've ever printed a downloaded model, so let's hope it goes well.

While that's going, I have some tact switches that need to be replaced in a synth which I am not acknowledging the existence of because I haven't finished repairing it yet.

It's out with the old...

And I forgot to take a picture of the "in with the new". Well, just pretend it looks like the picture previous to this one, but with newer looking switches.

All told, I replaced quite a few switches.

57 of them to be exact.

Which makes for 228 solder joints that were desoldered and resoldered.

And just in time, the print is done.

As I expected from looking at the model, some of the overhangs and bridges didn't print too amazingly well.

But a bit of trimming with a hobby knife cleaned things up well enough to work.

And the ROM programmer still fits on top.

So I'll call that a success, and another project checked off the list.