[sdiy] SMT rationale? prototyping?

[Paul Higgins]

Forgive me for asking a (possibly) stupid question--I can't believe 
I've never thought of this before!  Is the main rationale for the rise 
of SMT parts--other than the increasing miniaturization of electronics 
in general--the fact that stray capacitance that plagues through-hole 
parts limits the frequency at which they can operate?  I just was 
poking around inside my Mac, and it suddenly dawned on me (duhhhh...) 
that when you get into clock speeds exceeding 2 GHz, you're gonna have 
some problems when every pin looks like a few pF to ground.  
Furthermore, I remember reading something recently about how the PCB 
fab people aren't terribly interested in letting engineers know what 
those stray PCB capacitances really are.  (The author was discussing 
this in the context of long PCB trace runs and their effect on audio).

What do people recommend for prototyping with SMT?  I imagine that most 
DIYers probably don't have robotics stuffing their boards.  :-)  I've 
seen those SurfBoards which let you use SMT stuff with breadboards, not 
to mention making the soldering of SMT parts to a board a bit easier.  
The conventional wisdom on this list seems to be that they're a rip-off.

There is a TI/Burr-Brown part I use that is significantly cheaper in 
SOIC-8 form than as a DIP-8.  We're talking several $$$ cheaper.  The 
SOIC-8 package doesn't look too horribly intimidating; I think I can 
handle this.  However, when I got my Atmel AVR starter kits recently, I 
freaked out when I saw those TQFP-64 packages!

What do people recommend for soldering equipment, etc?  I have a 
temp-controlled solder station that I've been very happy with; I'm 
pretty sure that I can get SMT tips for it.  Do I just need some liquid 
flux (and a magnifier lamp and a truckload of patience)?  I've been 
soldering for about 20 years, but I've never touched SMT until now.

Also, what brand(s) of solder and flux do people prefer for SMT?

Thanks to all.

-PRH

Paul R. Higgins
email: higg0008 at tc.umn.edu