I just got the amazing DS80C400 from Maxim and I feel torn: it's a wonderful piece of hardware, but it's SMD, and very small to that, and I've never done anything in SMD.

Hmm, maybe I'm missing something. But I did understand your question, that you ask for a do-it-yourself methode to fabricate a PCB for this DS80C400???

May I remember, that this chip has 100 (!) pins, each pin is 0.22mm wide, and the distance between two pins is 0.5mm!!!

I'm sorry, but it's absolutely impossible to fabricate a PCB with such fine copper traces by the help of self fabricated foils or self mixed chemicals! You will waste your time, money and will have many hours of frustation, when trying to do this!

Don't forget, that these fast modern digital chips need at least double sided PCB containing a solid ground plane. More, in order to keep ground noise minimal and to achieve adequate power supply decoupling dozens over dozens of vias are needed. How do you want to fabricate these??

Another point is solder resist laque. This laque is not only needed to prevent making short circuits when soldering chip pins, but also to prevent short circuits UNDERNEATH the chips from soldering dirt. A place where you cannot have a look at!

Working with 100LQFP packages and not using solder resist laque is just ridiculous!

By the way: Manufacturers of SMD parts highly recommend the use of pre-heating, immediately before soldering. Especially if you use a soldering iron. I made lots of bad experience in the early 90's with damaged parts from directly soldering with standard soldering iron! The temperature shock is quite enormeous. Only the pre-heating will keep this under control.

Kai