12 Aug
2006
12 Aug
'06
1:48 p.m.
This sounds as
though you're talking strictly about soldering them
to a printed-circuit board. If so, that's a lose right there,
compared to DIPs, if you can't connect to them (without equipment
prohibitively expensive for hobbyist use) except via a PCB.
Well that's pretty
much a given...there's really no other way to do
that. [...] Quick-turn PCB houses are super cheap these days,
though,
Hm? So moving to SMT means that instead of buying a $1.19 part to
breadboard a circuit with, I instead can buy a $0.89 part and throw
$12.99 at the minimum order for a PCB so I can connect to it.
Remind me again how surface mount is better?
Oh, okay, let's say I can bundle ten chips' PCBs into that order. So I
have $0.89+$1.299. This is still a dollar more than the $1.19 DIP.
As I've said a few times, things are
*different*...trying to treat it
like "a smaller version of through-hole construction" will not work.
Different...and harder, it appears, since at a minimum you need less
common (and more expensive) tools, and that's if you're doing a
finished design and just trying to assemble the thing. If you're
breadboarding, even your parts are more expensive, since you have to
add the piggyback carrier to the part cost.
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