Just wondering if anyone knows of any kits or perhaps small projects which might serve as a cheap and therefore low risk way to have a go at surface mount soldering.

I did find this kit - it has one IC and a number of discretes, and in the best case it's some kind of self-testing demo, although that's not crystal clear. Very cheap.

I also found a Simon game, not so cheap - £20+ - but the end result is something to play with for a bit.

It'd be nice to have a board with an ARM or Arduino or perhaps a calculator kit - but this one is all through-hole, normally an advantage but in this case the opposite of what's wanted.

Possibly just getting an SMD breakout board and putting an EEPROM on it would be a reasonable plan: making a 5V compatible in-place programmable memory in DIP format.

Any thoughts?

I don't know about a kit, but I have a few SX dev boards I bought years ago that are basically worthless. They have a few SMD parts on them. What I did was practice taking them off and on. Since I didn't have to worry about breaking anything or frying a chip.

I suggest you might want to find some cheapo board on eBay. Something you won't care if you damage it.

Or, go to a Goodwill and find one of those LinkSys routers or maybe some junky DVR. I see those all the time for just a few bucks. You could practice on them.

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Cat; the other white meat.

That's an idea - I have a few routers which may not work and will probably never be repurposed... although it does mean I get an equal amount of desoldering practice.

A standard hot air gun from the hardware store can make desoldering a little faster

I remember now I did try desoldering using a little butane torch... I should probably have tried the slow approach.

I have a couple of SMD kits I ordered from eBay. They took so long to arrive that I was already well on my way by the time I got them. I'll likely never use them now. Happy to drop them in the mail for you. Also, I have a spare V1 SBC board from my project I will likely not use either. Lots of SMD ICs, 0805 and 0603 components on that board.

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C74-6502 Website: https://c74project.com

Thanks for the offer Drass! What kind of kits are those? Are they the same as the £1 kits I linked to? It's a great price, but shipping delay might be a consideration.

I think the only SMT ICs I have for solder practice are PLCCs. I don't have any SO or SSOP or other gull-winged packages to practice soldering with, but some, like low-end op amps, are very cheap at places like Mouser (under 20 cents each). I'm not sure what you would practice soldering them to; but messing up an IC of this type would be a minimal loss. A few years ago, I won an eBay auction for a large gang EPROM programmer with plug-in adapters, for well under the price of just the shipping, and then it turned out not to be what I had hoped; so I removed all the many PLCCs from their sockets for solder practice, removed the LCD and keypad and the many ZIF sockets, and threw the rest out.

I heard many years ago about some kind of tool that would bend the leads of DIPs into J-leads for surface-mounting, so if the part was not available in SMT, you could still put it on a board with SMT parts on both sides since it didn't need holes going all the way through to the other side of the board. Actually this might be an easy way to start practicing for soldering J-lead SMT parts too, which are on .050" centers instead of .100" A few minutes' web search for such a tool came up with nothing except this for power transistors which is a similar idea:



Does anyone know anything about the tool? I believe it will put the DIP up high enough to put more SMT parts underneath it.

A similar thing is when they cut the DIPs' leads a little shorter and put the straight lead directly down onto the solder pad. It's called "butt" or "I" lead. Soldering requires a good fillet. It is suitable for hand-soldering and for solder paste, but not for wave soldering.

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http://WilsonMinesCo.com/ lots of 6502 resources
The "second front page" is http://wilsonminesco.com/links.html .
What's an additional VIA among friends, anyhow?

Yes, those seem to be the same SMD kits I ordered. I have two. Let me know if you'd like them. I'm sure my shipping department will be MUCH faster than theirs!

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C74-6502 Website: https://c74project.com