[vcf-midatlantic] gold fing-ers

[David Gesswein]

On Thu, Apr 19, 2018 at 05:38:16PM -0400, Herb Johnson via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
> 
> Or, tell me
> "nickel isn't so bad, don't insert and remove it every day, you'll
> be fine".
> 

Haven't done any gold replating to give you first hand on that. I did
do the ENIG gold on a edge connector circuit board. The edge connectors have
been on and off a number of times. It looks like the gold has worn through
noticably. On the connector one side is all grounds. I measured through a
cable plugged in the restance between pin pairs and they were constant and
about expected from the cable resistance so it looks like the nickel is
working ok as a contact though nickel oxide film is supposed to be poor
conductor. Board is a couple years old.

With one data point if the consequence of bad contacts is low and used
in benign enviornment just living with it may be ok. Report I saw online
indicated connector lubricant can help lifetime of gold plating and contact
resistance change.
Got to be better than the TRS-80 expansion connector.