Thank you all for your advice, links, and images on prototyping SMD chips.
I can now cut prototyping time down quite considerably by using one of the
commercial SMD prototyping boards mentioned.  My original method of Kynar
traces to the pins, whilst effective, was way to time consuming and fiddly.
It was a great feeling to get the FT232BM chip working first time using my
method, but I am certainly not interested in doing that time and time again.

As a closing observation on this subject, I would just like to say that the
FT232BM is a chip ideal for prototyping PIC USB solutions.  I cannot for the
life of me understand why FTDI only brought the chip out in QFP format.

Now I cannot wait to start prototyping the PIC18F8720.

Ian.



-----Original Message-----
From: pic microcontroller discussion list
[mailto:PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU]On Behalf Of David P Harris
Sent: Sunday, 5 October 2003 12:01 pm
To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
Subject: Re: [EE]:SMD chip prototyping


Hi-
This might be the place...http://www.beldynsys.com/snapapart.htm
David

Bob Barr wrote:

>On Sun, 5 Oct 2003 00:15:11 +1000, Ian McLean wrote:
>
>
>
>>Hello everyone,
>>
>>It has been some time since I have been on the PIC List, so g'day to
>>everyone.
>>
>>I would appreciate any bright ideas that anyone has for prototyping SMD
>>chips.  I have been using, for example, the FT232BM USB chip from FTDI on
my
>>latest PIC designs (with great success I may add, they work great !), but
>>boy are they fiddly to prototype with.
>>
>>
>>
>
>There's a company that makes a product called "Surf Boards" (or some
>similar name). They have various SMD land patterns available. I
>haven't used them myself but they look like they'd do the job for you.
>
>
>Regards, Bob
>
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