Regular IC Sockets

Although it adds costs to your design, the use of IC sockets has its advantages

- You have the ability to remove a suspect IC when you are troubleshooting a circuit problem
- Easier to replace a new IC on your board
- IC sockets can be placed in advance for future needs
- Aids in the planning phase to make a new circuit design easy to change mid-stream
- Replacing a good IC for a bad one is less money that having to replace a good board for a bad one
- Allows the simple exchange of IC chips permitting the circuits to be reprogrammed
- The testing of a bare unmounted IC chip is not an acceptable practice so the use of sockets is a good solution