[Milsurplus] Tinker's Lament: Parts Ain't Parts No More

[David Stinson]

I don't get much time to tinker and home-brew, but I can 
sneak in a few minutes a week on projects.
Before long,
we may not be able to do anything at all with those few minutes,
because "parts ain't parts no more."

I wrote awhile back about creating "Borg Implants" to help our
old radios get along in the modern world.  The idea was to 
build small circuits that could be "implanted" and allow 
operation of a radio without irreversible modifications.
For example- A piggyback oscillator that could be implanted
in a TBY or a BC-222 modulated oscillator radio.  The implant
would stabilize the set and make it legal to operate without
doing irreparable damage.

My first shot at this was putting a pair of Lear Aviation
light aircraft radios on 75 meters.  The transmitter works
already, but the matching receiver was for 200-400 KC.
The tower usually talked to the aircraft on LF, and the 
aircraft talked back on 3105 KC.
I built a tiny converter front end from an NE602 balanced 
mixer chip.  The converter is about the size of a large 
postage stamp.  It works great and puts the 3880 KC AM window
right at 300KC on the dial.  One problem- the converter needs
about 6 volts DC, and the receiver uses 1.5 volts A+.

Not to worry- little boost converters are off-the-shelf
and I bet I could find one that would fit on an even smaller board.
I search around and found what I thought would be the perfect chip-
It was a new release from National Semiconductor, the LM2623.
The specs for this little boost converter were perfect, as it was
designed to work down to .8 volts and provide almost any output.
Plenty of current capacity, too.  
And National Semi. even offered to send me four free samples!
Well, I jumped on that.  I knew the chip was surface mount,
but I'd dealt with that before.  I have a good small tip iron
and could get a mounting board (thanks for the suggestions, guys).
So I sent for the chips and waited.

They came today.  I opened the static envelope and what looked 
like a 1-inch piece of 8-MM movie film fell out.  Embedded
in this film were four very, very tiny chips.
See the photo at:

http://home.mindspring.com/~arc5@ix.netcom.com/ittybity.jpg

That's a real penny, folks.  And the silver things to the right
are the contacts on the first chip.  
I turned it over in the pack so you could see it.
No way I can make contacts for that thing, 
nor have I seen a "sky" board I could use to mount it.
Yes, I know I could build a little booster like they use in 
throw-away cameras, but I was so looking forward to this chip.

My point is: How long before everything looks like this?
Will we get to the point that, unless you have a molecular
level heat station, you can't even connect a joint?

Just in case- Does anyone know how to mount this thing??

Dave AB5S