If we're still talking about Daryl's substitute hybrid for the now-unavailable 65802, it has four ICs on it, on a board made to take the space of a 40-pin DIP and plug into a 6502 socket in existing boards. Here's the layout, from his website:
IOW, it's not just putting a single PLCC into a DIP socket. Also, .025" square posts are too thick for IC sockets.
I use SMT for my PCB layouts for work, but I never do connectors in SMT, since I've seen them rip the foils away from the board when any force was put on them. Connectors basically need to be thru-hole because of how that has the effect of riveting them to the board. Thru-hole connectors also take less board space, because they don't have to have wings sticking out the sides.
I have not checked prices recently, but traditionally Ironwood has been three times the price of Aries which gives high quality. One of my early efforts for a multi-megabyte SRAM module was to stack these SRAM ICs on an Aries adapter like this:
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Besides not looking nice, this was way too labor-intensive. The PCB I laid out for the moduel I sell stands vertically and takes less area on the board it plugs into:
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It has four ICs on each side.