Welcome to another thrilling installment of my 1200XL's story. Prior to fitting the Ultimate 1MB board when it arrives, I decided to install the Mega-HZ stereo board. Unfortunately, I'd neglected to request turned pins from Wolfram, so I decided to replace the square header pins on the stereo PCB myself. I have no problem with the square pins as such, but I wanted to resocket the 1200XL with precision sockets and I didn't want to leave a machine socket under Pokey. The square pins do tend to weaken machine sockets anyway.

So - once I'd eventually obtained turned pins at a reasonable price (from technobots in the UK), I set about painstakingly removing the existing header pins from the stereo board. I first prised off the plastic strip and then individually removed the pins and solder. I only damaged one pad in the process, which fortunately didn't have any traces attached to it on the top side.

This is the finished result:

Next job was to remove the machine socket from the mainboard:

This was replaced by a nice precision socket:

Finally, here's a photo of the stereo board in place with just a few wires left to attach. Since the stereo board completely overhangs the OS ROM socket, the Ultimate 1MB header will probably have to be placed in the (vacated) BASIC ROM slot (currently occupied by the EPROM in the photos).

Next time, I'll be installing Ultimate 1MB, and after that I hope to fit the PAL s-video mod. And then she'll be done!