Neatness does not matter as much as functionality, as someone has already stated. You may however find that a neat layout is easier to verify: untidy wiring may be confusing. In some circumstances, excessively long and entangled connections may have negative effects on performance.

A complete schematic diagram will also help you (or anyone else) to be able to check the circuit out.

 

thanks for the reply, i had a look at a schematic diagram regarding the IC chip and i seem to have it OK, im more concerned about whether or not the switch is wired up correctly and whether or not the 74LS00 is wired correctly to the 74161 chip.

 

Each very old high current TTL logic ICs needs its own 0.1uf ceramic supply bypass capacitor.

 

i dont think we need any capacitors for this circuit to function.

does everything else seem to be OK compared to the drawn diagrams ?

 

You are using very old TTL logic ICs that draw a high supply current. Each IC needs to have its own 0.1uf ceramic supply bypass capacitor connected very close to its supply pins with very short leads.

If you used newer Cmos logic ICs that use an extremely low supply current (and have a wide supply voltage range) then maybe only a single supply bypass capacitor is needed for all of the ICs.

 

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