There are those of us who like to use veroboard, at least for prototyping, want lots of IO and don't want to do custom PCB layouts for everything. What chance is there of having a Mega2560 on a pure 0.1"-pitch board? In other words, the hack-friendliness of the Arduino Nano with the power of the 2560 (or larger).
Alternatively, DIL/IDC headers for ribbon cables to break out ALL of the IOs, eg as seen on the DE0-nano FPGA board.
Either of those options would rock.
You are kidding, right?
It's not breadboardable and if I wanted to do SMD soldering on huge fine-pitch chips I wouldn't be buying an Arduino, would I?
What size package were you expecting to get Atmega2560 processor in?
Leadless would be smaller. Still fine pitch.
I think you can still get this
https://jkdevices.com/arduino-megamini
Can you get "veroboard" as "island of holes" to plug it onto?
If you want a DIP like adapter, with just 2 rows of pins, I think that'd be 45 to 50 pins on a side to get all 86 (83?) IO plus power, gnd.
Is that what you had in mind?
I think this device could work - put it one row of male pins down to connect to protoboard, and the other facing up (male or female) to connect off to other places.
The megamini looks good thanks, it'd probably work well with ribbon cables.
Be carefull.
Jkdevices.com did not deliver my order (fully paid by paypal) and does not respond to my communication.
That was the concept of the 3rd party Sanguino board ( http://sanguino.cc/ ) which is breadboard and any .1" spaced proto type board construction compatible using a more powerful avr 644P chip then available on then arduino boards (pre-mega offerings). Unfortunately it doesn't appear to be supported as to IDE versions as there site shows support only for IDE version 18 and indeed may not even be available today.
So the concept of designing and selling a DIP friendly module version of the avr mega1280/2650 is not a difficult product to produce. It just requires someone or firm to make the needed investment in hope that there is a large enough market to make it worth while. The popularity on the arduino Nano form factor does support that a more powerful version would also have a decent niche market.
In the mean time the DIP version of the mega1284 offers the most powerful, easy to implement arduino compatible chip, abet needing IDE modifications/additions.
