Comparison: Bread Board vs Vero or Proto

Thread Starter

retched

Joined Dec 5, 2009
5,207
I have seen many folks use the terms "Veroboard", "Breadboard", and "Protoboard" interchangeably.

I have always known a Breadboard as:


Veroboard also known as stripboard:




Now all of these ARE prototyping boards aka protoboard BUT:

Often the "protoboard" is different from a stripboard because of "pre-solder-padded" board with special patterns like:


However it seems that the word or label "protoboard" is used more and more to define a pre solder padded board with holes and pads at .1" spacing that is PRE-populated with a uC like this:



While im at it, during this search, I found a 2,860 tie point breadboard WITH jumpers for 3.99. I think this is a great deal for any n00bs that are thinking about getting into the hobby.

http://www.virtualvillage.com/2860-tie-point-solderless-breadboard-with-jumpwires-007808-039.html
 

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Jaguarjoe

Joined Apr 7, 2010
767
$14.00 shipping put a huge damper on this deal

Before there were plastic plug in breadboards and strip board with copper, we used Vectorboard and flea clips. Vectorboard was like stripboard without the copper. Before that it was a piece of wood and Fahnstock clips.
 

marshallf3

Joined Jul 26, 2010
2,358
I use the cheap Radio Shack ones, or the one that Mouser sells for more precision projects since it's FR4 instead of phenolic.

Jameco and MCM Electronics also stock them, Goldmine was out the last time I looked.

I prefer the ones that are made to take DIP ICs and have several bus bars, it isn't hard to separate parts of bus bars with an X-Acto knife or a Dremel with a rotary cutter.
 

Thread Starter

retched

Joined Dec 5, 2009
5,207
$14.00 shipping put a huge damper on this deal

Before there were plastic plug in breadboards and strip board with copper, we used Vectorboard and flea clips. Vectorboard was like stripboard without the copper. Before that it was a piece of wood and Fahnstock clips.
Wow. That shipping sure does put a damper on it.

It was worth a try. I thought it looked too good to be true.

I guess if you live in China, you could just pick it up. ;)

I first used wire wrapping before I got to any fancy boards.

Before that was the springs. I cant remember who made the kits.. They may still be in production. But you just tucked the end of the stripped wire into a spring and it made your connection.

AHHH.. Hours of listening to my crystal radio while in my basement with the antenna wire wrapped around the plumbing.

I would rather listen to the radio in those conditions rather than upstairs on our family radio. Because I BUILT IT!

I liked the little earplug speaker. Made me feel like Uhura on Star Trek.

Ok.. It didn't make me feel like a grown black women who was in love with Captain Kirk, but you get my drift.
 

SgtWookie

Joined Jul 17, 2007
22,230
"Breadboards" are generally white plastic with pre-drilled holes, vaguely resembling a slice of white bread. That mental image alone should end the debate on what "a breadboard" is.

"Protoboards", "veroboard", "stripboard", and many other types are generally made from FR-4 (reinforced fiberglass), usually pre-drilled on 0.1" centers, and usually have copper foil in various patterns, from rows of donuts to strips. Some have no copper on the bottom at all.

In the old days, we'd use wire wrap boards. These generally had power and ground planes, and we'd attach the wire wrap sockets to the power and ground planes by using little "Z" shaped pieces of metal that had holes poked in one side for easy attachment to the power or ground pin.

In the really old days (tubes aka valves) we'd use terminal strips and point-to-point wiring. You'd screw the terminal strip mount to the chassis. The terminal strip itself was generally made from a type of fiberglass, and had two or more tinned lugs, only one of which were connected to the chassis ground. This ancient technique continues today using IC's in the "dead bug" technique, where ICs are glued/epoxied to a ground plane, and wiring run between the up-ended terminals. While it may seem arcane, it can work extremely well, particularly for RF circuits. If you are not well-practiced at it, the results can be nightmare-ish.

A similar construction technique is the Manhattan style; where multiple ICs are stacked on top of each other. This was very common in the old days of hacking personal computers; I did that to enable lower case text in my TRS-80 Model I (along with writing a driver in Z-80 Assembler; the driver had to be loaded via a cassette deck each time I booted it)
 

marshallf3

Joined Jul 26, 2010
2,358
AHHH.. Hours of listening to my crystal radio while in my basement with the antenna wire wrapped around the plumbing.

I would rather listen to the radio in those conditions rather than upstairs on our family radio. Because I BUILT IT!
Tuning coils wound around oatmeal boxes with a sliding piece of steel, paper caps you couldn't help but scrape the wax on just for the fun of it. Homebuilt caps, lead ore (galena) crystals or a razor blade, either with a bent safety pin contact for a detector - just about any two dissemilar metals would work. Wires strung from tree to tree. Can't even recall who gave me my first true germanium diode.

Kids look at us today and ask how we got along without cell phones and Nintendos in our days. All you can do is say "We eventually grew up and invented those things, what's your contribution going to be?"
 

tom66

Joined May 9, 2009
2,595
What do you mean?

Your stripboard has no solder pads? or solder strips?
We call the stuff with copper on it veroboard (which I believe is a trademark, but soon to be generic), and the stuff with no copper stripboard or matrix board. Confusingly, sometimes veroboard is referred to as stripboard.
 

Wendy

Joined Mar 24, 2008
23,415
This is funny, you beat me to the topic. I've been thinking bout posting for a couple of hours.

I have to disagree with breadboard definitions though, historically the name came from hams using real breadboards, the kind you slice bread on, to build their tube circuits. It later came to mean any circuit that was thrown together using odd materials.

When I was in high school it seemed I could only get my hands on perf boards. This had the holes but no pads. It wasn't until college I ran into the protoboards, the white blocks everyone is referring to as breadboards. Googling around I find the convention is not as gelled as everyone assumes. Their both terms are used interchangably. Wikipedia agrees with Wookie though, as does Jameco.

Breadboard is an old term though, I still feel it is incorrect to narrow it down to a specific product. Protoboard is debatable. It does seem I am a minority though.

When I refer to a protoboard I will be talking about a reusuable white socket. A breadboard is any system for making a one of a kind board. I know I am on shakey ground, but it is what I learned and I'm not going to change now.
 

marshallf3

Joined Jul 26, 2010
2,358
When I refer to a protoboard I will be talking about a reusuable white socket. A breadboard is any system for making a one of a kind board. I know I am on shakey ground, but it is what I learned and I'm not going to change now.
Same here.

When I got my white one it was called a protoboard, matter of fact it's right here and the brand name on it is ProtoBoard no 101

Anything else to me is pefboard or breadboard, although I tend to think of perfboard as the one without any copper.

I've also heard the term breadboard used to describe prototyping a project as in "setting it up on a breadboard"
 

Wendy

Joined Mar 24, 2008
23,415
What year did you actually get into electronics Wook? I started as a teen around 1972 or so.

Rereading the Wikipedia article they reiterated a lot of what I said. Protoboards as I define them were invented in 1971.
 
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Audioguru

Joined Dec 20, 2007
11,248
Veroboard and stripboard both have parallel strips of copper. They are perforated in a 0.1" grid. The strips form half of a pcb and the parts and a few jumper wires form the other half. Only one wire is in any one hole like a pcb. The strips of copper are cut with a drill-bit to length and then the remainder of a strip can be used for another function and will have less capacitance to other adjacent strips of copper.
 

marshallf3

Joined Jul 26, 2010
2,358
I've been in electronics since I was a mere 5 years old. Of course back then the extent of my experience was removing all the tubes out of my TV set and testing them at the corner drugstore - it just kind of just grew from there. I don't remember when I bought the ProtoBoard but I do remember it was quite the improvement over what I had been doing.
 

Markd77

Joined Sep 7, 2009
2,806
I've always known the things in the first picture as solderless breadboard, probably varies from country to county.
The thing with the components attached to coiled springs was called a 200 in 1 although bigger and smaller ones were available too.
 

Thread Starter

retched

Joined Dec 5, 2009
5,207
That does look mighty familiar!

Do the sections come out? are they removable?

If I remember correctly, mine had a red 'radio' area and a separate 'amp' area if you wanted to hear it over a speaker rather than the ear-bud.

I remember them being separate units... They could have all fit together into a unit like the one pictured in your post.
 
I've always known the things in the first picture as solderless breadboard, probably varies from country to county.
The thing with the components attached to coiled springs was called a 200 in 1 although bigger and smaller ones were available too.
That brings back memories! When I was 6, I won $30 in bingo at the school where my dad was the janitor, and I begged him to bring me to Radio Shack so I could buy a "150 in 1", and then spent endless days making bird calls and radios and things.

 

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tom66

Joined May 9, 2009
2,595
I have two of those!

A 60-in-one and a 130-in-one.

Donated for my childhood. I spent ages wiring up circuits from the schematics.

My 130-in-one has a quad NAND gate 74LS00 by GoldStar, and a dual opamp BA728.
 
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