Yes I agree. I suppose I should have said.. I've seen SOME sloppy work. IF
one takes their time, they could do a neater job (trimming leads and
touching with solder, not globs and such) and even then enclose it to make
it look a bit more attractive. MNS

"Michael Black" wrote in message
...
"MR NO SPAM" ) writes:
I've seen people "solder" the leads on the backs of perf board too!
While it
works, it sure has a tendency to look sloppy! MNS

Perfboard was around long before most hobbyists had heard of wire wrap.

Once transistors came along, perfboard tended to be the method of
construction, unless you were planning to do it point to point on
a chassis like you would with tubes. "Messy" has no relevance since
the wiring was under the board. You'd use component leads to connect
the parts, and if they weren't long enough, bits of wire. And the ones
with bits of copper at each hole had the advantage, as someone pointed
out, that you could solder the components to the board before adding
the wires.

People were hesitant to make their own etched circuit boards, and even
after they became fairly common in hobby circles, many would say "I don't
want to bother" and they'd stick with perfboard.

If perfboard faded from view in recent years, it's likely because
etched circuit boards have tended to take over, if not made by the hands
of the hobbyist then because people were buying premade circuit boards.

As someone pointed out, perfboard is not so great for RF. Better
to use a blank piece of copper circuit board, and build on top of
that, so you have the copper as a good ground point. But that's
likely "messier" than using perfboard with the wiring on the bottom.
But how something looks is irrelevant. You can stick it in a box
out of view. Building over circuit board actually works better than
perfboard, because it's easier to run wires in a three dimensional
space.

Of course, from time to time I've used copper circuit board
as "perfboard", drilling holes where needed and reaming out the copper
from around the holes so the components go in without shorting. Wire
up on the non-copper side of the board, like perfboard, but all
ground connections go to the copper on the top side.

Michael VE2BVW

"Leon Heller" wrote in message
. ..


James W wrote:

When working with simple perfboard (just holes, no 'traces'
connecting
the holes) how does one connect the components together? I'm guessing
by
using jumper wires for point-to-point wiring on the backside, but
that
seems a bit ugly.

That's the usual way. If you just show people the front of the board it
doesn't matter if the back is untidy.

Leon
--
Leon Heller, G1HSM
Email:
My low-cost Philips LPC210x ARM development system:
http://www.geocities.com/leon_heller/lpc2104.html