This may be a couple of stupid questions: How close together can you solder IC’s, do they need to be spaced out a little or will they interfere with each other. The second question is can I mix 556 IC’s with cmos IC’s. I did this with one of my builds a few years ago and it’s still working fine. Many thanks.
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I would say that you can mount your ICs pretty close. Have a look at a memory board from an old where the memory chips sits quite close. The buggest problem, or the best remedy for interference are decoupling caps between power lines and trying to keep traces carrying sensitive signals isolated.
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In Dead bug building you often stick chips back to back to keep things close or stick mounts together. I have seen the use of copper fabric or tape wrapped around signal wires as a shield. @Soundbrigade makes a great suggestion about decoupling which is effective but can sometimes add additional complications to a circuit. If in doubt, breadboard it out!
yep, but keep them close to the ICs that get fed by them. They may in some cases not seem to have an audible effect on the audio passing through a circuit but they may prevent 10s … 100s Mhz of oscillations that may occur without them and therefor make your circuit more stable. Put 100nF on the + power lead to GND and on the - power lead to GND of every IC as recommended by many electrical engineers like e.g. R.A. Pease who designed analog circuits for ICs for National Semiconductor for many years (have a look at his book: ‘Troubleshooting Analog Circuits’).
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Thanks all for your help. I’ve used the decoupling caps before, but always forget to put them in. So you’ve all recomfirmed how important they are to the IC’s stability.
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