On my breadboard, when looking at it with the letters facing me, I can clearly see there is no metal strip for the right most columns ( '+', '-' ). There is a metal strip on the opposite side. I was having some trouble with some circuits and I come to find out because those columns are not actually connected. Is this how all breadboards should be?
Thanks!
No, you got a bad breadboard. I've never seen that before, and I always buy the cheapest possible ones from the Chinese sellers on eBay.
Ok thanks for the info. I was about to break it even more until i figured out it was missing that rail!! >:(
Wow. That is unusual! I always hate on breadboard, but it usually has all the rails! Whether they reliably make contact with the pins you push into them is another matter (usually when it's new, they do, but as you use the holes, particularly with largish things like square pin header, it bends the rails and then they stop making reliable contact). That by the way is why you want to use "machined" pin header instead of the usual square stuff - the pins are narrower and shorter (similar to DIP IC pins - and just as easy to break off). But of course, most boards come with the cheaper square pin header, and most people who use breadboard are doing so specifically because they don't want to have to solder to their boards.) Breadboard also degrades as it ages and the rails oxidize.
And once the breadboard is unreliable, it becomes sensitive to the presence of observers too. Literally every time anyone shows me a project in person that they built on breadboard, I get a good 5-10 minutes to criticize their design and make fun of them before they fix all the loose wires in the breadboard so it works!
The rals sections of the breadboard are just clipped on to the main breadboard. You might cut the double sided foam tape on the back of the breadboard along the seam of the bad rails section, unclip it, and throw it away so that you can continue using the good part of the breadboard without any chance of future confusion if you don't use that breadboard for a while and forget about the defect.
