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> I didn't know they still made wire wrap guns. I don't know anyone who has used one in the last 15 years.

I just use a manual wire-wrap/stripping tool (from digikey.com). I'm a software guy who dabbles in hardware, hence the arcane technology.



They are pretty good for that. Honestly, if you didn't want to go through the trouble to get a PCB fabbed by a commercial PCB vendor, wire wrap is a pretty good choice for simple circuits.

When I do that simple stuff like that, I use wires and solder instead of a wire wrap tool. Wire wrap might be a little faster.

If you want to prototype high speed analog/RF circuits without PCBs, take a look at "dirty" or "dead-bug" construction. HAM guys love it for building radios. You assemble your circuit over a piece of bare copper-clad board and solder the pins either directly together or short pieces of wire. People do this with both SMT and thru-hole parts.

Jim Williams has a great tutorial on this technique: http://www.linear.com/pc/downloadDocument.do?navId=H0,C1,C11...




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