I design usb scopes as a hobby for the development experience.
My first design was 460K samples per second and all through hole.
Once I got up to 2MHz samples I found I needed to use SMD TQFP 0.5mm pitch PIC microcontrollers but I kept the rest through hole for ease of building.
My first attempt wasn't good as I bent a couple PIC pins being to rough and had to bin that attempt.
On the next attempt I was more careful and got the PIC lined up as spot on as I could then applied some solder.
I then put plenty of solder on the other 3 sides, way too much really.
I then found with plenty of liquid flux and a copper braid I could remove most of the solder. I found the trick was t ohold braid on the pins and move soldering along the braid so it didn't bend pins.
I put the PIC on its own small PCB that had through hole connectors to the motherboard.
Through the connector pads I could buzz the pins out for adjacent shorts.
In fact in some cases a short didn't matter as both pins were inputs and not used.
I have built 3 pcb's now and they work great.
