In my experience, "solderless breadboard" is
the usual term, at
least
if you're talking about the things I suspect
you are.
Occasionally a
brand name gets used to refer to them.
That's what I've always heard them called. I know they're generally
considered terrible, but I've had lots of luck with them for
low-speed
projects (especially power supplies for tube amps; I've got one
that's
covered with capacitor juice from various electrolytics exploding
and
has some melted-out holes resulting from diodes installed backwards
but
still manages to work just fine).
They're probaly fine if used within their limitations. That is that
stray
capacitance doesn't matter too much (and be warned it can matter even
when the system appears to be low-speed) and if the odd poor
connection
won't cause too many problems.
That said, I don't think they save much tiem. The time taken to form
component leads to fit into one of these breadboards, or to strip a
piece
of isulated wire to go in, is not much less than soldering the
components
to stripboard (assuming your iron is already hot). And doing the
latter
will at least eliminate poor conenctions.
-tony
Around 1980-1981 I was working for Volvo Cars. At one time I was given
the task of evaluating the optimum location for a knock sensor. I had an
engine fitted with a number of knock sensors in various locations on a
dynamometer test bench, and a device connected to the ignition which
allowed me to advance the ignition from TDC in increments of a few
degrees. This thing was provided as an official test device from a large
US manufacturer, I have forgotten which one - RCA? GE? GM? It was built
with CMOS 4000-series ICs IIRC, and constructed on - solderless
plugboard... Changing the amount of ignition advance was done by moving
a wire between different holes in the plugboard.
Using this kind of thing in an engine test cell, with an engine running
under heavy load close by and me standing next to it, struck me as
rather shaky to say the least. Especially as a bad connection, or
plugging the wire in the wrong hole, could make the engine produce
"interesting" noises. Had something serious happened to the engine there
might well have suddenly been large parts of metal flying around and
plenty of hot oil and water spraying about. It did actually work OK
though.
/Jonas
