It's been seven hours and fifteen days.....

Since I thought that making a PIC-based project would be a bit of a laugh and probably while away a few hours. However, it's been one nightmare after another (with long periods of waiting in-between). First off, getting hold of a PIC programmer proved a disaster. When I finally got one, I bought in a load of 16F628A chips (ok, four) and a usb-to-serial chip on a breakout board. Deciding that this would be too expensive to use for the hundreds of ideas I had bursting around inside my head, and that it wouldn't be too difficult a job to use the much cheaper (and smaller!) surface mount chips, I set about a circuit layout that allowed me to use these two reasonably-priced components together.
Then I found out I was rubbish as surface mount soldering.
But that might also have something to do with being unable to get a decent toner-transfer image, despite trying four different photo papers and even some hand-drawn traces with indelible marker pen.

I've heard good reports (and bad, funnily enough) about Press-n-Peel paper.
Given that I've not managed a single 100% successful image using the toner-transfer method, I thought I'd better give it a go.

But while I was waiting (again) I thought I'd investigate the how to actually implement real USB, using the 18F series of chips. And it looks quite feasible. So now, I've used my first sheet of Press-n-Peel (at a cost of about £2) and finally managed to make a PCB with no broken traces or fudged hand-drawn lines. It worked a treat! But I'm still rubbish at surface mount soldering and decided to bin the whole FT232RL chip idea.

So I now have a perfectly formed PCB, but the pin layout only works with components that I've since decided not to use.
Bugger.

Only a few more days before my 18F2455 chips arrive in the post and I can pretend that the last two weeks never happened, and maybe even get at least one circuit built before I go away on holiday (in August).