SOIC Adapter for the monetarily impaired

SOIC adapters & sockets are expensive, who knows why, there's no reason they couldn't be as cheap as DIP sockets. It's seems like all the new sexy audio chips are coming out in surface mount packages only. Here's a cheap way to convert a SOIC to fit into a standard DIP socket.

 First I cut a piece of perfboard 4 holes by 4 holes.

I used a 2 - 8 pin DIP sockets, the bottom one is just so I could put pressure on the wires without messing up the pins of the top one. Then I simply stuffed some short wires thru the holes in the perfboard on into the top socket, and bent the wires over.

Here's what it looked like after putting in all the wires and trimming them with snips.

 I printed out a SOIC to size (not shown) and used it it as a template to further trim the wire leads.

I tucked the SOIC leads under the wires for a snug fit.I did have a little trouble lineing everything up because everything was still loose at this point. So I used a drop of super glue to anchor the SOIC, and I could move the wires into position and solder them in place much easier.

Here's the finished thing-a-ma-bob. I ended up gluing the perfboard to the socket to make a nice solid package.
The socket was 10 cents at a nearby surplus dealer, the small piece of perfboard couldn't be more than a pennies worth and the wire leads were scrap. Over all, the deed was done dirt cheap. Aligning and soldering the tiny leads was a pain though. A conductive glue would probably work just as well as soldering, I may try that.
Now I can use all those fancy-shmancy SOIC chips in my experiments!