On Fri, 22 Jul 2016, Corey Cohen wrote:

There were no blank boards. That's the key. The sockets were wave soldered by the PCB manufacturer according to Woz. There were 2 runs of 100 boards each.

This is also an early layout board (Non NTI) but with different wave soldered sockets than the two known production runs which both used TI sockets even though they were from a different PCB house. This board is from the 1st PCB house that made the "byte shop" boards but has the more expensive and reliable RN sockets. Which implies it predates the Byte Shop boards because of all the evidence.

TBH, I'm not sure why people get hung up on wave soldering vs hand soldering. My own hand soldering is practically indistinguishable from a properly wave soldered board and it wouldn't be unreasonable for someone working at Apple to be able to hand solder boards similarly, or even for a prior owner of the board to have retrofitted those sockets.

When I stuff boards, I use an assembly jig and form/pre-cut component leads before soldering. This is how I was (re)taught to solder when I began working with high reliability gear (cutting leads after soldering can cause microfractures in the joint) and I continue to use those techniques. I also use supplemental flux because the flux in cored solder is really only sufficient for bright/clean pads and leads. I consistently get better results with the extra flux.

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