Hello, I was wondering if anyone could recommend an affordable alternative to the PB-503 board as they are a little pricey or knows where I can find one for less than say $125.

 

Amazon et-al, are full of very cheap BB's, Why not put it together yourself this way?

 

e.g., the first exercises on a bare board would be to build in the different modes circuits using the board itself for testing!

 

Good Lord! Yes, look on eBay for old HeathKit ET-3XXX boards! For what they want for the PB boards you could buy very good used PSU, Signal Generator, and bench multimeter plus a slew of breadboards as well! I have a few of the old Heath boards but rarely use them as they are very limited in what they can do and much better ways to invest the money that they cost. They are kinda a "One trick pony" and for what they cost you would be paying for Churchill Downs racehorse!

 

Global Specialties PB-503 Proto-Board



You don't need it.

Get yourself a single board or a pair on a metal plate.





Buy or build your own power supply. You can get a wall-adapter and some 3-terminal voltage regulators for a lot lower price than what you would pay for a fancy proto-board.

 

@S.Coker These are taking the path that I was Pointing to , good examples!

 

Hello, I was wondering if anyone could recommend an affordable alternative to the PB-503 board as they are a little pricey or knows where I can find one for less than say $125.

Setups like that are reasonable for a classroom/lab environment where you want to work with many students at the same time and have them work through pre-planned exercises that leverage what is available in that system. The setup makes it easier to keep the class moving at a decent pace compared to the thousand little things that different groups will stumble over if everything is separate (of course, they'll find plenty of things to stumble over any way -- that's where the real learning usually happens).

But on a self-directed basis, you are better off getting cheap things (or, better yet, building them yourself). It will probably cost a lot less and you will learn a LOT more in the process. Build things as you need them and don't build them any more complex that you need them. You can always improve the design and modify/replace things with better units as the need arises.

If you want, look at what that unit has that you think would be useful to have on hand to use over and over and then build your own little setup with those things. Most of them are very cheap to do. They don't have to be fancy -- use a small solder protoboard to build them on and screw them onto a piece of thin laminate or plywood.

 

If you do decide to go the DIY route, my go-to when building the likes of these is to use VeroBoard (strip board) as a base.
Available from quite a few vendors.