> "Is soldering this even realistic? How long did that take?" Disclaimer, I'm getting old. In the old days we soldered our S100 computers, and something like

> "Is soldering this even realistic? How long did that take?" Disclaimer, I'm getting old. In the old days we soldered our S100 computers, and something like a 18 slot backplane had 1800 connections, and generally worked. Not unusual for a single card to have maybe 500 or so IC pins, 50 decoupling caps (100) and lets say 100 pins for jumpers and connectors. So it would be equivalent to making an entire S100 computer. I would estimate many tens of hours total. Also I never did it but no small number of people soldered up IBM PC clone motherboards. There were also clones of Apple-II and TRS-80 model 1 in kit form. Surface mount is a lot easier because once you learn how (and after 1000 or so components you'll be pretty good) there is no more flipping the board upside down over and over or snipping off wires. After 0204 RF chokes and microwave capacitors its nice to slum with giant digital logic parts so big you can pick them up with your fingers. Why some of the larger IC packages are so large that the device is no longer affected by solder surface tension (around say 100 pin TQFP size) You rapidly learn tricks like using the same brand of IC socket thru the whole board and keep a wooden board around the size of the PCB so you can stuff and cover and flip and solder all the IC sockets simultaneously. Another trick is to always remove the flux, not because it electrically matters but because you can't do it without 100% inspection of each joint, and you'll probably find one or two to clean up per board. Because you probably don't own a wave solder machine it also saves time to solder bypass caps on the solder side but beware of clearance issues the board might not fit anymore LOL. On my infinite list of things to build is the transistor clock around 2700 soldering joints. Totally doable. That might be a good place to start.