Adam Agnew wrote:
http://www.missl.cs.umd.edu/~agnew/t23pictures/
You'll see the socket open and closed there. It's got a little latch you pry open with your finger to release the chip.
Yep, that looks like the Emulation Technolgy zif socket (or at least that's what I call it). Never heard the term "coffin" but it seems appropriate for a couple of reasons.
http://www.emulation.com/catalog/off-the-shelf_solutions/sockets/tsop/
I guess it depends on how well you install it, but I had one of these lift the traces on a board I was working on, after a few dozen cycles of in and out. Almost put me in a "coffin" since I was debugging a program where the bug turned out to be an intermittent on the socket. So I would be very gentle with it. I never tried it, but epoxying it to the PCB might make it more rugged.
TSOPs are neat for their size, but they sure are delicate for R&D use. I have found them to be tempermental on my EMP programmer as well.
I don't know of a better solution, BTW, just an FYI.
-Steve