Since this thread is about wire-wrap, though it does deal with alternatives, I'll stick to what I know about wire-wrap. Like nearly every other technique, wire-wrap requires rigor and discipline. If those are applied, the circuit resulting from their application will have integrity and will function as designed. The key, of course, from where I sit, is that (A) the circuit is inherently alterable with appropriate effort, and (B) the circuit can be either permanent or totally disassembled and its components reused.

I have wire-wrap cards that I've owned and used, again and again, since the '70's, on which the "wear" may show just a bit, but which are just as useable as they were when new. I recently "unwired" a couple of large, Multibus-I cards that were sample cards in an ultra-wide logic analyzer I built back in the early '80's when I found I couldn't buy one with nearly 400 channels. I have some small "utility" cards that I've used again and again. Removing wires is tedious, but not particularly demanding, and I do it myself most of the time, or I have an idle technician do it when there's no prospect of more useful work on the immediate schedule.

That reuseability is, perhaps, the most prominent difference between wire-wrap and the many alternative one-off or prototype construction techniques. I know of few people who have even attempted to modify circuits built with the multiwire, or several Insulation-displacement or "chain" wiring strategies that were commonly explored as being "quicker and easier" than wire-wrapping. I've stuck with wire-wrap as a construction technique because I've had the tools and materials since the '70's, and have learned to do it adequately. Further, since I once sold boards I considered to be superior to what was generally offered, I use those boards that I still have on hand. Since they're reuseable, I don't have to have more made very often.

RE