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I have a PCB from inside a Dell keyboard that I took apart. I would like to be able to affix wires to the edge card connector, without needing to solder anything.

I don't want to solder anything, because when I need to take it apart (which I will), that would make it much more challenging.

I was thinking something that the PCB could simply be slid into, that could also have the wires connected to. Any ideas are welcome, thanks in advance!

I also have a pretty tight budget, so nothing too expensive, I was thinking I would build whatever it would be, but not necessarily.

The PCB, for reference:

enter image description here

JRE
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Rowan Ackerman
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    Just solder to it rather than mess around. See my answer to a related question [here](https://electronics.stackexchange.com/a/243881/73158). – Transistor Feb 01 '21 at 20:48
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    @RowanAckerman: That's not a chip. That's a printed circuit board (PCB) with a chip (under that black blob,) a socket (where the wires are plugged in,) and an edge card connector (the flat, golden things along the bottom edge) which is presumably what you want to connect things to. – JRE Feb 01 '21 at 21:00
  • Test sockets or clips like what you're suggesting tend to be really REALLY expensive. That one is also not anything that looks too standard. Just buy a soldering iron. – DKNguyen Feb 01 '21 at 21:07
  • I would bet any decent solution will cost more than the keyboard so.. As others said, just solder it :) – Wesley Lee Feb 01 '21 at 21:15
  • If you just really want to be able to take it apart and you don't need to be fawncy, you could count the pins and solder on a cheap connector with the right number of pins, whatever you can get a male and female of with solderable ends and enough pins. One of the engineers might have to veto this if impedance matching is a problem, but I don't see why it would be. – K H Feb 02 '21 at 02:27
  • @KH define "cheap connector" it sounds good, but I'm not sure what exactly you mean. – Rowan Ackerman Feb 02 '21 at 15:20

2 Answers2

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I don't want to solder anything, because when I need to take it apart (which I will), that would make it much more challenging.

I think you really, really, really underestimate how annoying and expensive a non-solder connection is going to be. You can use all the money you save on not buying/making one to buy a few dollars worth of desoldering wick which you can use to clean up the connections when you're done.

user1850479
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If the tracks are at a standard pitch, you may be able to find an off-the-shelf card edge connector that will make contact with it.

However, those connectors tend to have solid ends to correctly align the card being plugged in. You might have to do some surgery on a connector to allow your card to plug in. You might need to make up a jig to hold the board in the correct place, or else it will be very unreliable.

Simon B
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