EEVblog #568 - Solderless Breadboard Capacitance
Why Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange recommends it
Electronics Stack Exchange users link it when someone asks how much parasitic capacitance a solderless breadboard adds, because it gives measured figures of roughly 2pF between rows and about 20pF on the rails.
Recommended by 2 people across 2 different months, 2014 to 2022.
What it is
Dave Jones of EEVblog measures the stray capacitance between contacts on several solderless breadboards, since manufacturers do not publish it. He tests row-to-row and power rail capacitance and discusses what that means for high frequency prototyping.
Cited in 1 Wikipedia article, including Breadboard.
What people said
Recommends KyranF · 2014-10 · Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange · on “PIC18 not working when wiring 30pf capacitors of cristal resonator to ground”
Good old Dave Jones (a fellow Aussie!!) talks about it in his video maybe that will help you understand it: [this video]
Recommends Trevor_G · 2017-05 · Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange · on “What order of magnitude should I expect the parasitic capacitance to be for a solderless breadboard?”
2-3pF row to row, and 20pf rail to rail, but checkout this video... [this video] Probably a bigger issue with BBS is often the flying leads and longer legs on resistors etc. The extra inductance will also give you issues at higher frequencies. That and fairly high point contact resistance.
Cites Anthony · 2021-10 · Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange · on “Would it be possible to prototype a low-powered 386SX design on a breadboard?”
According to the datasheet [LINK] the low power version of the 386SX comes in a QFP100 and can be run at as low as 2MHz. I'm wondering if it might be possible to prototype a system on a standard solderless breadboard using a QFP100-to-DIP100 test socket. Based on what people do with 6502's, 2MHz seems like it could be okay but I'm worried about the max values of C[IN] = 10pF, C[OUT] = 12pF, C[CLK] = 20pF on page 67 of the datasheet and maybe other things that aren't even listed. I'm guessing this is probably stupid but I just want to play with a minimal real 386 setup. According to Dave from EEVBlog [this video] , who measured the the parasitic capacitance on several different breadboards at 1kHz
Cites Anthony · 2021-10 · Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange · on “Would it be possible to prototype a low-powered 386SX design on a breadboard?”
I'm worried that there will be more than 10pF parasitic capacitance due to the breadboard, not less. It seems like EEVBlog measured this on several breadboards and got approximately 2pF inter-lead and about 20pF on the power rails. [this video]
Cites Mast · 2022-06 · Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange · on “Find out value of pF capacitors”
"It seems like the breadboard itself has some pF capacitor" Yes, this is a known problem. See EEVblog #568 [this video] .