Probably started a few years ago with a resistor assortment from Amazon or eBay or here and there. I have had to fill in a lot of "holes" in my resistor assortment. All I buy now are 1% 1/2w from several china vendors on eBay. All appear to be from the same manufacturer and if not within 1% or less then certainly less than 5% (haven't seen any that off) and some are spot on within an ohm or 2. Specialty and higher watt items come from DK, Jameco, Mouser, etc. 30 years ago my goto was Jameco when the local parts house (long gone when all the radio & TV repair shops closed) couldn't deliver or RS in a pinch. Still have a lot of very old parts from back when...

 

Or from Canada.

Some of us can! (Be from Canada, that is!)

 

Canada's only safe until the US natural resources run out.

 

Canada is fairly safe but Americans still cross the border and bring their guns and drugs.
Drugs? Why do Americans buy Canadian insulin?
I had a wonderful vacation in Cuba because there were no boisterous Americans there.
America is the world leader in the number of virus cases and maybe number of deaths.

On topic, how many threads have a problem with an FM radio or FM transmitter that doesn't work because it was built on a solderless breadboard?

 

I have good luck with mostly DC, or very slow switching circuits on solderless breadboards. But I spent more time than I will ever admit to debugging SPI circuits that turned out to be breadboard issues that vanished when I soldered everything instead. My first hint was when I leaned a hand on it while holding a scope probe and it worked, removed my hand and it stopped. It turned out some connections were fine for DC (passed the continuity test), but not good enough for higher frequency signals unless you put some kind of pressure on the wires to make it press on the contacts harder. I also would not recommend a solderless breadboard for any very sensitive analog ADC type circuits, beyond just trying to get a general idea for if it would work.

 

I see these guys building small computers on multiple breadboards and shake my head. It's bad enough getting one breadboard full to work correctly without going crazy. Anything more than a few active devices on a small breadboard is asking for headaches. To each his own...

 

It is going to be hard to follow the thread and ‘like’ every informative and helpful comment here. So to everyone, I do appreciate this; and I have been reminded that it is always better to fully understand the possible causes of a problem than simply ask for / accept an answer.

(PS ‘Somewhat gutted’. If I were on my planned, return stay in Canada right now, I would most likely not be here yet ... if that makes sense!)

 

Worth a mention as one alternative (or adjunct) to solderless breadboards is Adafruit's "Perma-Proto" series of printed circuit boards, which replicate the connection patterns on SBBs but in soldered form. They're offered in quarter-, half-, and full-size versions, as well as special purpose versions such as RPi hats, flexible, etc.

Since they have the same connection patterns as SBBs, any design proofed out on an SBB can be directly transferred over to one of these boards and soldered to eliminate any potential connection reliability problems.

This is one of their half-size versions:



Very handy.

 

I also vouch for these great Perma-Proto boards.
The greatest invention since sliced bread for permanent, one-off projects.

 

It is going to be hard to follow the thread and ‘like’ every informative and helpful comment here. So to everyone, I do appreciate this; and I have been reminded that it is always better to fully understand the possible causes of a problem than simply ask for / accept an answer.

It's your thread. You can take your time and do whatever you want. The longer a thread gets, the more likely it will have some off topic responses. You can keep it on topic or ask for moderators to help by deleting off topic posts.