group buy for homebrew CPUs?

Less common in stores, too, IME. I have seen cheap soldering irons and guns on the shelves of numerous hardware-store places, alongside tins of flux and wire-format solder. I cannot recall ever seeing solder paste, or hot-air guns suitable for surface-mount work. Similarly, I have often seen decent soldering irons in catalogs, but can't recall seeing corresponding SM tools alongside them. Does your experience differ? It has admittedly been a while since I looked. Whereas you think surface mount can do no wrong, and will not accept any criticism of it. (Yes, that's an exaggeration, but so is your summary paraphrase of my posts.) The original claim, as I recall, was that surface-mount is harder to work with than through-hole. I believe that is true - to get comparable ease of work, you need additional, rarer, and/or more expensive tools, at a minimum, and even then I don't think it's really fair to call it comparably easy to have to use, say, a magnifier.... This has little to nothing to do with whether I like SM, its inherent positive attributes, such as higher component density and easier pick-and-place, or its contextual advantages, such as better availability for many parts. (Or its assorted disadvantages, for that matter.) You may like it. You may choose to use it for a design (independent of whether or not you *like* it). I still maintain it's harder to work with than through-hole. /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B