Hi Folks -
I've been revisiting the layout and it occurred to me that switching to an SMT version of the CPU may not actually be too bright since it does not allow swapping or upgrading the component to different versions (i.e. 168 to 328).
Would anyone care if the board is slightly bigger but you had DIP sockets instead of a soldered on CPU? Here are some benefits I can see for the DIP version:
- Allows upgrading to other CPU cores (ATMega 8, 168, 328, or others)
- Should you fry or otherwise mess up one CPU, you could swap it out for a replacement
- Board could be sold without CPUs as a lower cost option and user could acquire or scrounge CPUs to populate it with.
Let me know what you guys think. I will still switch out the caps/resistors for SMT which will save some space.
Here's a rough guestimate at the layout: