40 pin soic sockets.. Do they make them?

You are seeing fewer sockets in surface mount designs. are you sure this 40-pin is a SOIC ??

Assmann and Mill-Max make surface mount PLCC sockets.

DigiKey parts catalog -- page 333

For surface mount, you need to know the proper techniques in order to not routine the board or components. Good soldering iron and proper sized tip, temperature control, steady hand and some practice helps.

I would highly recommend practicing on junked audio/TV circuits or computer motherboards for practice - (better in your parts drawer or junk box than the local city landfill) you might get a few expensive parts for free that way !!

Surface mounting multi-pin components can be performed by hand -- but other approaches are possible and work well.

Seattle Robotics - Encoder (June 2000) Have you seen my new soldering Iron? Kenneth Maxon

Well I'm realtively sure that the old video card that I have has a SOIC socket on it but the prom in the SNES game I'm trying to put in a socket may be a TSOP instead. I don't know for sure yet becasue I don't have the game cartridge yet. I do however have a picture from a web site.

The IC labeled U1 / mask rom is the one I need to replace with some kind of removable eprom, eeprom or anything else that would work.. (Flash Rom same as eeprom?)

I have thought about making this simple and just solder wires from the board to a DIP socket.

- Mike

That sounds like the way to go. IDC (ribbon) cable has the same pitch as the SMT ROM's pins, so a lot of people use that. Like here for example:

I think the largest FlashROMs you can get in DIP-32 are 512kB.

29C040, 29F040 etc.

I would say to get a Game Doctor SF7 with a parallel port cable, but I see you're wanting to use a board with the FX chip. I don't think it'd work with that one (I'm assuming the FX chip reads from the ROM, but I don't know, really).

Try this web page

The easiest but most expensive way to use SMD devices is to use a socket.

See these 3 manufacturers

Adapters and PC boards You can make your own PCB adapters (for breadboarding or whatever) with masks from a laser printer.

If you want to use 100 pin IC with 0.5 mm pitch, you will need SMD pads 0.3 mm wide and an isolation gap of 0.2 mm or 8 mil = 0.008 inch. One dot of a

300 dpi printer is 3.333 mil ; 0.00333 inch or 0.08467 mm. The 0.2 mm isolation gap or track width are only 2.36 dots of a 300 dpi printer and only 4.72 dots of a 600 dpi printer.

The precision of a laser printer is to bad too. Try to print a line of 100 mm length in both directions and measure it with a high precision ruler. You will see errors of about 0.5 mm and these errors are different for both directions. Using InkJet's for photo-resist is generally a better idea than laser printers - the ink on a transparency is a little more opaque than toner on a transparency generally. Some of the newer Epson Stylus inkjets are at 1440dpi, which results in higher accuracy tracks at smaller pitch

There is a free calculator at

(it does require registration, but the allow you to log in thereafter with only your email address).

There are pull-down menus to select the package you will be using, which may be specified three different ways. It then will give you a web page with complete specifications for the placement and dimensions for the SMT pads as well as exactly how the device leads will be soldered to the pads: Minimum toe & heel and side fillets are given. This is nice because the part vendors usually just give you the package dimensions and leave it as an exercise for the customer to figure out how big to make the pads.

My first stop is always

for socket adapters.